


Falling in Love in a Pharmacy

by dxmichelle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), F/M, Nerdshipping, Overly-Dramatized Workplace Hijinks, The 12 Days of Fic-Mas, The Retail AU, The Ups and Downs of Working in a Pharmacy, This DocuDrama is Directed by Corporate Troll Maxmillion Pegasus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27967583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dxmichelle/pseuds/dxmichelle
Summary: Inspired by true stories*, Hermione Granger and Seto Kaiba star in a highly indulgent 12-part miniseries about retail shenanigans at a major drug store chain.*All names have been changed to protect both the innocent and the annoying.
Relationships: Seto Kaiba/Hermione Granger
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	1. The Promotion

**Author's Note:**

> 90% of this fic are my own personal work stories, collected from my still-continuing 7+ years of working as a manager in Retail Pharmacy Hell. 
> 
> Some abbreviations and terminology:  
>  **ASM** : Assistant Store Manager  
>  **ASMT** : Assistant Store Manager Trainee  
>  **Floating Pharmacist (also: Floater)** : A pharmacist that does not work exclusively out of one store, and spends each workday in a different location.  
>  **Staff Pharmacist** : A pharmacist that _does_ work exclusively out of one store.  
>  **RXM** : Pharmacy Manager  
>  **DM** : District Manager

“They’re asking for you in the office,” said Parvati, taking a moment to glance in Hermione's direction. “Oh, and hi! – by the way. Glad you’re here, we’ve been swarmed with flu shots.” She then turned back to her computer screen and the patient in front of her, who stood staring down at the register pinpad waiting for his okay to run his credit card.

Hermione paused. “I’m sorry, what?” She was barely two steps through the pharmacy door. Her white lab coat was draped over her left arm, and her oversized ‘ _Carpe Librum’_ travel mug sat balanced in her right hand. Parvati could have at least waited for her to get through the door and her jacket on before swarming!

“Albus and Minerva,” said Parvati. She dropped the patient’s prescription into a plastic shopping bag and handed it over the counter. “Here you go, have a great day!”

The moment the patient was out of easy earshot and no other customers in line for the pickup window, she spun back around. “They didn’t mention what was going on, but they wanted to see you once you got here.”

Hermione blinked. “Minerva is here? And she wants _me_?”

Parvati shrugged. 

Minerva McGonagall visiting their store was nothing new; as their district manager she had audit walks with their general manager Albus Dumbledore at least twice a month. But _she_ was never topic of conversation.

And why should she be? As the store’s staff pharmacist, she kept her head down and did her job, and in her opinion she did it very well, thank you very much. She graduated pharmacy school at the top of her class and easily transitioned into a position at one of the biggest retail pharmacy chains in the country.

The pay was good, she enjoyed her work, and most of all – the technicians and store staff that made up her second family. Filius Flitwick, the store’s pharmacy manager, was known for being both compassionate and fair, and kept the work atmosphere light despite being right in the middle of the busy immunization season.

The only thing she could think of as to why both the store and district manager would be looking for her, would be if something was wrong. Did she sell the wrong package to a patient? Did someone call in and complain about her? Was there a drug recall notice that she forgot to sign off and check?

Her next breath hitched down in her throat - oh no: did she forget to lock the narcotics safe!? But just as soon as the thought arrived, she batted it away. There would no point dwelling on what ifs when she was going to just find out in the next few minutes.

“Well…” she began, “I suppose I’ll just get settled in and head back there then.”

Hermione passed by Parvati to the pharmacist station, and to her surprise both the review desk and the patient consultation window were both unmanned. Filius opened the pharmacy today. He was probably out giving an immunization.

“Hey, Hermione!” said Neville Longbottom, poking his head out from around the back of the ready bins. A large basket was tucked under his arm as he moved up and down the bin rows, filing the finished scripts away to be sold.

“Hello,” she greeted him with a smile and set her mug on the desk beside the consultation window. “How has the day been so far?”

Neville shrugged. “Couldn’t say too much. I just got here. I’m your closer, along with Luna. She’ll be in about an hour or so from now? But for now it’s calm. Haven’t had too –"

He cut himself off as the sensor for the drive thru lane went off, a quiet yet shrilly beep, alerting the pharmacy that a car had turned the corner around the building and was pulling up to the window.

Neville pressed his lips into a thin line and stared towards the window, out of sight of the customer outside. “Okay, well it _was_ quiet.”

Hermione laughed quietly, shook her head and slipped her lab coat over her sweater. “Just another day.”

She logged into the consult workstation and pulled up the pharmacist call list. Only fifteen ‘new therapy’ calls this time, not too bad at all. Not like the forty she had to knock out yesterday. Once Filius returned from giving someone their shot, or whatever it was he was doing, she’d head back to the office and see what was going on today.

“Hey, Hermione, can you check this?” Parvati shuffled over, a prescription bag held out with the label facing her. “This has a consult block.”

“Hm?” A quick set of keystrokes brought up the patient’s file and she skimmed over the warning notice before clearing it out of the system so the medication could be sold. “Oh, it’s fine. I’m sure they already know, but just make sure they’re aware that the doctor increased the dosage on that medication. If not, send them over to me and I'll explain it for them.”

Parvati nodded, disappeared back to her register, and Hermione went back to redialing her first patient on the call list. She was one number away from the phone dialing out when the music track playing through the store audio system blinked out and her store manager’s voice crackled over the PA system.

**_Hermione, please come to the office._ **

Hermione glanced back at the pharmacist’s station. Filius still hadn’t returned yet.

“They want me now? There won’t be anyone to cover.”

“It’s alright,” said Hannah Abbott. She poked her head around from around the first aisle of medication shelving, a blue plastic filling bin in one hand, and a patient’s prescription leaflet in the other. “We’ll just page one of you back if we need you.”

“Don’t worry!” said Neville. He emerged from the drive-thru window as the car he had just finished helping pulled away, and he moved back towards Hannah in the filling station with two newly dropped-off orders to file away. “We won’t burn down the pharmacy while you’re gone.”

Hermione attempted to look scandalized, but then laughed right through it, ruining the effect. “At least save my tea!” It wasn’t the drink that she was worried about – just the mug. It was a souvenir from a cozy hole-in-the-wall bookstore she found while on a trip to New York City with her now-ex, but it brought back fond memories, especially since the store it came from was no longer in business.

She stepped out of the pharmacy and started across the sales floor towards the office on the clear other side of the store, sidestepping a small child running at full steam out of an aisle only to be stopped by a hunched older woman holding onto her cane so tightly her frail, bony fingers looked ready to snap.

“Excuse me – do you work here?”

The white pharmacist jacket embroidered with her name _and_ the badge clipped to it that said –

_Hermione G.  
Staff Pharmacist  
How can I help you stay well today?_

– was clearly not enough a giveaway that _yes,_ she did absolutely work here, but she smiled warmly regardless. “Yes, is there something you’re looking for?”

“Where are your….” The old woman leaned in and whispered in a voice low enough that Hermione had a hard time hearing, and she stood barely a foot away from her. “… _adult diapers_?”

Hermione blinked. This wasn’t the first person to seem embarrassed to look for incontinence products, but they were literally in the same aisle the woman was standing in, maybe ten feet down, facing the customer’s back.

“Oh, they’re right here,” said Hermione, and she took small steps around the woman and gestured to the section halfway down the aisle.

The woman slowly pivoted, blinked at the shelf and then raised a shaky, narrow hand and clasped it down against Hermione’s shoulder. “Oh my – if it were a snake, it would’ve bit me! Thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” said Hermione, and after checking to make sure the woman didn’t need anything else, continued on her way.

She pushed through the swinging door separating the employee-only area from the rest of the store and peered through the little window on the office door. Sure enough, through the cloudy glass she could see Filius Flitwick and Albus Dumbledore talking with Minerva McGonagall.

Her hand raised to the electronic keypad lock, and hesitated over the numbers. Somewhere deep down in the pit of her stomach, she felt uneasy. There were rumors that positions were being cut across the company. Were they going to do away with the staff position and just have every store’s pharmacy run by a manager and however many different floating pharmacists? Was she going to be demoted? Let go even?

No, she didn’t want to think about that last option.

There could really be no other reason for her to get called into the office with all of the managers unless it was something bad. To the life of her she couldn’t imagine a single thing she’d done to get put on some sort of reprimand list.

Did a customer complain about her? Most of the regulars that came by to drop off and pick up their medications knew that she would go out of her way to help find a solution to an issue, if one existed. Sure, there were some patients that couldn’t be helped and no amount of compassion would be enough to quell their usually misplaced anger, but it would have to be _some_ customer complaint for the pharmacy, store, _and_ district manager to want to sit down with her.

So it probably wasn’t that either.

She steeled herself, knocked, and then keyed in the passcode for the door.

“Hello, Hermione,” said Albus Dumbledore, getting his greeting in a fraction of a second earlier than the others. He gestured to the empty chair in the corner of the room.

“Hi,” she said, and rolled the chair out to sit more in the makeshift circle they had made in the middle of the office.

“Before we get started, how are you today?”

“Fine, I suppose,” said Hermione, “A little nervous.”

Filius chuckled.

“Is everything alright?” asked Albus.

“I…just can’t help but think I did something wrong,” said Hermione.

“No, not at all,” said Minerva, “On the contrary. We have something for you.”

Hermione’s brows shot up. “For me?” She couldn’t fathom what – her work anniversary date was coming up, sure, but three years wasn’t a milestone year. Her golden first anniversary mortar-and-pestle pin remained fastened to her badge with pride, and she wouldn’t receive a new one until her fifth year. So it couldn’t be that. And this wasn’t the time of year the company doled out the annual merit raise…so that was out too.

“I’ve been in talks with Maximillion Pegasus, the district manager for 394, and they have an opening in one of their stores that I think will be an excellent fit for you,” said Minerva.

Hermione’s nose wrinkled up and she tilted her head, curious. “…That’s the next district over – north of us?”

“That’s right.”

“So…you want to transfer me out?” She looked to Albus and Filius. “Have I done something wrong?”

“On the contrary,” said Filius, “You have done an admirable job here! I wouldn’t want to lose you at all! It’s just that –”

Parvati’s frantic voice suddenly boomed over the PA, and in the background they could hear two separate phone lines ringing **. _“Can we have a pharmacist return to the pharmacy, please?”_**

Filius sighed.

“It is alright, Filius, we’ll take things from here,” said Albus. With a short little nod, Filius got up and left to rescue his technicians from their crisis.

Hermione turned to her store manager once the door shut again. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Not in that sense, no,” said Albus calmly, “You are a treasured member of our team. But Filius and I agree that your talents could also be used elsewhere in a store that is not running as efficiently as ours. District 394 is rather short on pharmacists, and they could very much use the assistance.”

“There is a store that doesn’t have a staff pharmacist _or_ a pharmacy manager,” said Minerva. “Maximillion and I have been trying to find someone to try and help man the helm there.”

Hermione’s jaw dropped open. “There’s no – so _who is running the pharmacy_?”

“The store manager, at the moment,” said Minerva, “Who – I should add, just _replaced_ the store manager that was separated from the company only two weeks ago.”

“This store is definitely struggling, and is very much in need of a steady hand,” said Albus. “And there is not much more that we can teach you here. This is a perfect opportunity to continue your growth and development.”

“As their staff pharmacist?” she asked.

Minerva smiled. “Oh, no. We want you to man the ship.”

Hermione froze, eyes wide. “ _What_?!”

“We’re offering you a promotion.”

* * *

_Two days later_

“You’re leaving us?” Harry asked, jaw dropped. He had just clocked in for his closing shift, and the moment he found the opening manager to check in and see what was going on for the day, Ron dropped the bombshell right on his head. Hermione would only be with them for another week. “I thought you liked it here.”

Hermione sighed.

Harry leaned over and rested his arms over the top of the consultation window divider, the saddest pout plastered across his face.

“I _love_ it here,” Hermione said, “But this is an opportunity to try something new. We both know that Filius isn’t going to retire anytime soon, so there’s no room for me to grow unless I leave.”

Ron sauntered over from doing his inventory checks in the next aisle and leaned against the wall beside Harry. “I thought you were content _not_ being a manager.”

“I know,” said Hermione, “But…I think this will be a good thing. For me, for the store I’m going to…and for you all too! Change isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

“I suppose,” said Ron. “So, what d’you know about the place you’re going to?”

“Well….” She began nervously, “Not too much, actually. It’s a Tier 4 pharmacy, so there’s that.”

“Tier 4?” Harry whistled, “Damn. We’re only what, Tier 2?”

Hermione nodded, “Yes, so it’ll be busier, and it’ll be a challenge for sure, but that’s not necessarily bad.”

Ron shrugged. “Okay, what else?”

“There are only support pharmacists running it, and the store leadership had some huge shakeup, so they're definitely in need of help.”

“How far away is it?”

“About an hour from here,” said Hermione, “But I live more or less in the middle between both there and this store, so it’s a wash.”

“That’s not so bad then,” said Harry. “Anyone we know in it?”

Hermione shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s in another district. You remember Maximillion Pegasus?”

Ron scrunched up his nose. “The one that was covering our walks when Minerva was out for surgery? The one with the weird glass eye?”

Hermione sighed. “Yes, that’s him. He’ll be my new DM.”

Ron snorted. “ _Good luck_. He’s an oddball to say the least. So who’s running the store there?”

Hermione bit her lip.


	2. The Visit

In his seven years of working for the company – four of them as a store manager, Seto Kaiba couldn’t say he had ever seen a store in such piss-poor shape. No one could really tell him just what it was that got the old manager the boot, but the leadership staff that was left after Maximillion Pegasus and Zigfried von Schroeder, the region’s Loss Prevention officer’s bloodletting weren’t talking.

_Someone_ here still had to know, but whatever. He had more important things to worry about. The old store manager was gone, along with the assistant manager, and apparently the pharmacy manager left months before.

With all of their metrics in the toilet he had to wonder just what it was that these people did on a daily basis. The front cashiers seemed to be making an attempt to keep busy, but they lacked structure and organization. His two overworked senior pharmacy techs were trying to keep the RX running against the supporting floater pharmacists that the district scheduler kept sending them – pharmacists that were _not_ cut out to handle this store’s high volume.

And his supporting leadership, the ones he had left? Owen Nesbitt and Oscar Johnson didn’t do much of anything, and he had a sneaky suspicion that they were a part of whatever got Leichter and Gansley fired. Maybe it was only a matter of time before they got the boot too. And Fuguta was alright – he’d do a lot better if he wasn’t stuck doing the work of three separate people.

He wondered what it would take for his old ASM to transfer over here with him. He could _really_ use Isono right about now to help manage and right the sinking ship that was his new stomping grounds.

Seto arrived Monday morning, Day 11 in his personal hell, at exactly 6:30am, a good hour before his opening manager would arrive, and ran a finger down the day’s schedule column. He had Johnson this morning, so that didn’t give him any optimistic feelings about the day. For someone who has been in the keyholder position for five years – _almost_ as long as his own career in the company altogether, Johnson knew essentially nothing. Sure he could open and close the store with… _moderate_ success, but he was incredibly needy and incapable of making simple decisions.

Not _entirely_ Johnson’s fault – much of that fell on Gansley for not developing his staff properly, but it was still grating. He had a store to drag out of the mud – he didn’t have time to hold his hand and walk him through how to be a manager when the man was in the position for _years_.

Joey Wheeler was the opening cashier – an incredible loudmouth, but was always ready with a joke and customers seemed to like him, so there was that. As much as he tended to get on his nerves, Joey was at least a harder worker than two of his three managers, so…it counted for something.

He scanned down the page. Fuguta wasn’t working today, which meant that Nesbitt was closing. Nesbitt at least knew more than Johnson did, but he spent 85% of his day sitting in the office playing on his phone, and if he wasn’t in the office on his phone, he was hiding somewhere _else_ in the store…probably on his phone.

And it looked like Atem Sennen would be closing with him. Atem is the only current employee he hadn’t met yet – Yugi Muto, his lead photo associate, made mention that Atem was on vacation in Egypt, visiting old friends.

Seto dropped the schedule back onto its hook and started getting his day ready. 16 new emails, a bunch of them forwarded around that had nothing to do with him or his store, but there _was_ one:

_From:_ [ _maximillion.pegasus@dmnorx.com_ ](mailto:maximillion.pegasus@dmnorx.com) _  
To:_ [ _mgr.224@store.dmnorx.com_ ](mailto:mgr.224@store.dmnorx.com) _  
Subject: Today’s visit._

_Seto,  
I will be stopping in for an impromptu visit today. And I have a surprise for you! _

_I know it will be hard, but do try and contain all of your pent-up enthusiasm!_

_Best,  
Maximillion Pegasus  
District Manager, Area 394  
  
_Seto scowled. This was his 11th day in this store, and he had seen Pegasus at least twice already. So unless he was giving him a new management staff, the DM could stay at his desk in the regional office, far, _far_ away.

But he hadn’t been this lucky so far, so why should today be any different? He’ll save that pent-up enthusiasm for once the man leaves.

The opening floating pharmacist arrived and signed out the RX key at exactly 7:15, and Seto followed him out of the office, but while the pharmacist wandered off to open the locked gate, Seto cut down the small hallway near the restrooms and into the employee breakroom. Sitting on the counter directly next to the microwave sat the single-cup coffee maker he bought last week.

It was going to be a _long_ day.

* * *

Seto was only vaguely aware of the locker room door opening and closing, signaling someone coming in, but he didn’t pay attention to who it was. He was in the middle of the dental aisle, a clipboard in hand, scribbling notes for the day.

_Toothbrushes weren’t straightened…._

He turned the corner into the first aid aisle.

_Bandages look like a tornado ran through it…._

“HEY! BOSSMAN! WHERE YOU AT!?”

Seto froze, and closed his eyes. He was going to need a second cup of coffee, and it wasn’t even 8:00 yet. Too early to hear Joey Wheeler yelling throughout the store.

“First aid,” he said, voice barely above a mutter, but it didn’t much matter because Joey’s squeaky sneakers found him almost instantly.

“Yo, uh…can I have the registers?”

Seto lowered the clipboard a hair and furrowed his brow. From the front of the store he could hear someone manually push the front door closed. He glanced down at his watch.

7:58 am.

“Oscar should be here.”

Joey shrugged. “I just got here and there’s only two cars in the lot. Yours and the pharmacist’s.” He glanced down the aisle, after catching a glimpse of blond hair and light blue pharmacy scrubs out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, and Mai, apparently.”

He raised his voice. “ _Hey, Mai!”_

“Hey, Hon!” she called back.

Seto scowled. The opening lead didn’t bother showing up? That’s just wonderful.

He exhaled noisily and then stalked off towards the office. If Johnson really wasn’t here, then he had to get Mai Valentine the pharmacy tills out of the safe, anyhow. “Come on.”

Seto flung open the heavy safe door with a lot more force than he intended and started dumping tills into outstretched arms. “Pegasus is visiting again,” he said, his voice flat. “So don’t forget to –.”

Joey shifted to balance all the tills with one hand so he could give a salute with his other. “Greet everyone ‘n push surveys and all that pizazz. No worries, Chief. I got this.”

Icy blue eyes shifted to Mai. “And make sure you’re taking in waiters this time. We’re never going to get out of the hole we’re in otherwise, and I need Pegasus to stop finding reasons to come here.”

Mai nodded. “You got it.”

Seto jerked his head towards the general direction of the pharmacy. “And make sure he does his calls today.”

With her arms full of three register tills, Mai could only slump her shoulders in disgust. “Oh no, we don’t have Kemo today, do we?”

“Unfortunately,” Seto said under his breath, and then he waved them off.

**8:27am.**

Seto flipped the page on the clipboard as he walked into a pure disaster of a stockroom, remembering vividly how clean the room was when he left the store Friday afternoon.

_What the hell happened in here!?_

He shook his head, fuming, and made another note on the page. His eyes caught the minute hand on his watch and he stopped. Once the store opened, almost a full 30 minutes ago, he had gone back to making his task list, that by now had enough jotted down to keep the store busy through the next week.

But as far as he knew, Johnson still hadn’t made an appearance.

His jaw twitched.

The clipboard slammed down onto the nearest grey stocking carts with an echoing _splat_ and he stormed to the receiving door and the phone that sat mounted on the wall beside it. He dialed a number from memory and waited as the call rang out four times before switching to the automated voicemail greeting. He ground his teeth, waiting for the telltale _beep!_ so he could start talking.

_Beep!_

_“Oscar, you were supposed to open today. 45 minutes ago, as a matter of fact. I need you to roll out of bed and come in, and if you’re not, you need to call in and say so.”_

He slammed the phone back onto the mount a touch too hard, and it fell back out of the rest until the cord reached its stretching point, and he just watched the handset dangle in the air before he finally righted it, grabbed the clipboard, and left the stockroom.

**9:12 am.**

Seto was beating the keyboard on his desk to hell and back typing up the notes from his walk. Setting Joey on task was easy – it was Monday. There were a whole week’s worth of outdates to check. Plus _last_ week’s that no one bothered to do. It was boring work, but it kept him out of his hair for a while, and Joey didn’t care about the tasks he was given – he seemed to be happy so long as he had something to do.

And considering he found a great _many_ things that needed done in the last hour, it seemed the only thing that was accomplished over the weekend was mess-making. And lots of it.

The phone specifically to the right of his computer monitor rang. An internal call, from the pharmacy filling station.

Blue eyes shifted to the second computer monitor, sitting on the far edge of his desk. The screen was broken into 12 different camera views around the store, and he quickly found the one giving the birds-eye glimpse in the back of the pharmacy. It was Mai.

He accepted the call on speaker and went back to abusing the keyboard. “What do you need?”

_“Hi to you too, Sunshine.”_

Seto rolled his eyes. “ _You’re_ the one who called, not me.”

As one of his two senior pharmacy techs, and more importantly – one of the _few_ that actually _worked_ in this place – he tolerated all the sass she threw at him. The banter was sometimes a welcome break from half of the employees that he swore were afraid of him ( _good_ ), or the other half that he was sure just chose to ignore him and stick to doing their own thing (a whole lot of nothing).

_“Our order arrived early. I just wanted to get a feel of when you wanted to come back and play with us for a while.”_

Seto huffed. Of course – Pegasus’s ‘Code Yellow’ directive. When the RX order comes in, store managers man the fill zone so the technicians can get the truck put up without sacrificing patient waiting times.

Normally, the Code Yellow didn’t bother him, but being the only manager on duty ( _thanks_ , Johnson…) meant he was likely to get ping-ponged around the store every five minutes. Because he could never be so lucky to have a morning go without a hitch.

“Give me twenty minutes to finish this and I’ll be back.”

“ _Sure thing.”_

“…Has Kemo done his calls yet?”

There was a brief pause. “ _…No, not yet….”_

“Oh, _joy_.” He hung up the phone.

His jaw twitched again.

By the time he finished his list, Johnson still hadn’t called.

**9:32am**

“You know when you said twenty minutes, I didn’t think you _really_ meant twenty minutes,” said Mai. She picked up the box of vial caps and dumped it into the stock bin along the fill station.

Seto chose not to answer and logged into the second filling scale along the far end of the back counter. A glance up at the computer, and the little section along the top of the screen with the current numbers did little to improve his mood.

23 prescriptions needing typed and entered into the system.  
62 needing pharmacist review.  
12 printed and needing filled – of which at least one was someone waiting.  
1 needing the pharmacist’s final sign off, so it could be bagged and sold.

“We’re out of our threshold,” said Seto. The follow-up of “why” went unsaid, but from the tone of his voice, he might as well have.

“I know _I_ just got here,” said Duke Devlin. He was crouched on the floor, cutting the zip ties off of the twelve totes that had just arrived. “But it’s been pretty steady.”

_His_ unsaid statement was, naturally, ‘And _until_ I got here, Mai has been running the entire show because Kemo is an asshole who does less than the absolute bare minimum’.

Seto furrowed his brow and looked down the back aisle where the drive thru station was located. “Aren’t you missing someone?”

“Ryou’s in next at 10,” said Mai.

“Where’s Ishizu?”

“It’s Monday – her night to close,” said Mai, “I don’t think she rolls in until at least 2:00.”

Seto made some sort of grunt, dug the leaflet marked as “WAITING” out of the pile, and then disappeared into the stock shelving in search of the drug he needed, a single white bottle hiding in a sea of white bottles.

“I need someone to start typing,” said Seto. Medication located, he returned to the back desk and eyed the queue. Now there were 30+ that needed data entered, and 50+ that the pharmacist needed to review. Kemo hadn’t answered the phone once since he walked into the pharmacy, so what the heck has he been doing? “Whoever _isn’t_ typing needs to be working on the order.”

He turned to glare at the back of Kemo’s head. “And I need _you_ to support them if they need it at the front.”

Seto couldn’t see it but he could _feel_ Kemo’s scowl at him.

“Running the register is a _tech_ job.”

Mai’s eyes doubled in size and she stole a glance at Duke, still down on the floor sorting the order. He smiled awkwardly and raised a hand discreetly to make a slashing motion across his throat.

Seto paused from counting round white tablets out of the pile to glare back at his pharmacist. “ _Your_ job is to support your technicians – something you absolutely _haven’t_ done the last two times you worked in my store. So I need you to do _your job_. By the time they’re finished with the order, I expect your call list to be done.”

He heard Kemo sulk and then pick up the phone.

Ryou Bakura arrived in at 10am, and as Seto continued to man the fill zone, he watched the numbers, ever so slowly, return under their allowed threshold. He stayed in the back of the pharmacy until noon, a good hour after Mai finished putting the order away, and left with only a slightly worse headache than when he had gone in.

Johnson still hadn’t called.

**2:05pm**

Seto didn’t even hear the hard knock on the office door. He was far too invested into digging deep into the attendance policy. To his dismay, one instance of a “no call, no show” was _not_ grounds for termination.

The knock sounded harder.

“ _What?”_ he snapped, and peered through the window in the door, squinting through the darkened glass. One side of the window was treated to make it harder to see through, and the other side was as clear as the front windows above the checkout registers. The cloudy side of the window was supposed to face _in_ , so no one could just stand in the locker room and spy on whatever was going on inside. The office side was meant to be clear, so he could make out who was knocking on the door.

…Some idiot installed the glass backwards.

He could barely hear whatever was being said through the door, but it sounded like Ishizu, and she had the code to get into the office, so he waved her in.

“I need to utilize your – as Ryou put it – ‘tall person power’.”

Seto raised an eyebrow.

Ishizu held up a screwdriver. “The drive-thru mirror is falling down again.”

“What do you mean the mirror is falling down,” Seto said flatly, “I removed it last week.”

“And someone put it back up over the weekend, and now it’s ready to hit someone’s car again.”

Seto closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “ _Why_ do we even have this mirror again?”

“So we can see how many cars are _actually_ in line,” Ishizu shrugged. “Anyway, you’re the tallest person here besides Kemo, and we both know he’s not going to do anything outside of the Review Queue.”

“Has he finished his patient calls?”

Ishizu shook her head. “I have no idea. But Mako was making calls when I got here.”

“Well, there’s at least _one_ competent pharmacist here,” Seto muttered. He took the offered screwdriver and led the way out the front door and around to the drive-thru lane, where mercifully no one was sitting at the window waiting to pick up their medicine. He really didn’t feel like getting run over today.

…Though it _would_ mean he’d get out of Pegasus’s visit.

Speaking of…where _was_ he, anyhow?

“I’m not doing this again,” Seto scowled. “This mirror stays down until someone comes out to repair the bracket.”

“Of course,” said Ishizu. He didn’t know what it was about her, but she never seemed to be affected by his stormy mood. Unlike Mai who could get a hot temper, Ishizu never raised her voice, and she always projected a calm air about her, _all the time_.

He didn’t quite know how to read her yet.

Once the mirror was successfully removed from the side of the building – _again_ , he handed the screwdriver back to her. “Put in a work order for it. Address this with the rest of the technicians – _no one_ is to take the mirror out of the office. If someone else puts this up without permission, they can take it down themselves.”

“Understood.”

His stomach grumbled as he walked back inside. He hadn’t eaten breakfast before leaving the house, and thanks to Johnson’s disappearing act, he couldn’t leave the store for a break, and there was _no way_ he was wasting money on overpriced junk food from the snack aisle. Nesbitt would be in soon, but there was no point leaving now. The day was mostly over…and he didn’t want to be out of the store when Pegasus finally decided to make his appearance.

The moment he stashed the mirror away in the corner of the office and out of sight, he started up the coffee maker again.

**3:04pm**

Nesbitt arrived on time – relatively, and seemed to pick up on his boss’s mood the moment he entered the office to take over the safe, and after a quiet ‘hello’, didn’t say anything else as he worked.

Seto was fine with this.

A knock rapped on the office door once again, and before Seto could even bother to look up from the computer screen to try and make out the shape through the window, Nesbitt had already moved to open it.

Standing in the doorway was _almost_ a complete doppelganger to Yugi Muto, except this one was taller and had tanned skin. Even his hair looked similar, though this not!Yugi had more blond highlights.

“What’s up, Atem?” asked Nesbitt.

“I just wanted to let you know – or whoever is charge of ordering, that we’re out of canvas kits in photo.”

“Oh…”

Seto could feel Nesbitt’s eyes wander to the back of his head, not verbally asking ‘uhhh?’, but it didn’t need to be said out loud.

“I guess we have an order, huh?” said Nesbitt.

“You could say that,” said Atem, “A customer ordered two 8x10 canvases.”

Seto glanced at the calendar on the wall. Even if they ordered the missing kits today, they wouldn’t arrive in time for their warehouse delivery in two days. It would take another week for them to show up in store.

“Did you call the store across town to see if they have any?”

Atem nodded. “Yeah. They don’t. And I already called the customer to let them know about the delay. We just need to order more canvas kits. They’re okay waiting.”

“Well okay then,” Nesbitt said and turned back to counting trays of dimes.

Seto shook his head and looked directly at Atem. “You can also call the customer and see if they’re willing to reorder in a larger size we _do_ have. We can reprice the order to the cost of an 8x10.”

Atem shook his head, “No. We’re out of _all_ of our kits. Every size. Only thing we have are the upsell frames.”

He then blinked and gave Seto a friendly-esque wave. “Also hi, New Boss! I’m Atem.”

The fact that Atem already started troubleshooting his problem without needing him raised him up two pegs in Seto’s hierarchy of competent employees.

“Who is in charge of ordering?” Seto asked.

“Leichter was,” said Atem. “Yugi and I offered to learn, but Gansley didn’t think it was necessary.”

Seto closed his eyes and took in a slow, deep breath.

“…Yeah, I just wanted to ask someone to order those…I’m gonna head back up front now so Joey can head home.”

Seto didn’t exhale until the door had shut behind Atem, and then he turned to Nesbitt, still standing in the middle of the room frozen like a child caught swiping cookies before dinner.

“Where are all of the store expense and supplies kept?”

“Upper stockroom,” said Nesbitt.

Seto huffed, got up, and grabbed his clipboard. “There’s a to-do list for the day up front that I need completed before the end of the day.”

He didn’t bother waiting for a response.

* * *

This new store he found himself running had a weird sense of charm to it – and it wasn’t even all that old. The company decided to plunk a new location down on the tiniest lot it could find, therefore this particular store was small enough that it could fit _inside_ of the one he came from two towns over. Other than the fact that they didn’t have the shelf space to carry a third of the things he was used to, it meant less space to clean and less product to stock.

It _also_ meant that half of their stockroom was upstairs. The receiving room that lead out to the loading dock was spacious enough for an oversized delivery, but the backstock shelving sat on the backroom’s second story. A conveyer belt ran along the far side wall to send product up and down, but the store was not built with an elevator.

Thirty-three steps later (he absolutely counted them on his first trip up, and then pulled the largest face of pure and utter disgust at the _months_ of collective dust that had now kicked off of the stairs and the handrails and found a new home along the legs of his trousers), he stood in front of the space designated to their supplies and wished he had just sent Nesbitt to place the order instead.

It wasn’t a mess. Not exactly. ….But there wasn’t much of anything here, either. He was going to have to order a hell of a lot more than just canvas kits.

Seto turned on his heel and headed back for the office; he was going to have to find a master expense list to go off of to figure out what they still needed to order.

By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, his slacks were stained grey with dust. His headache didn’t get any better.

Johnson still hadn’t called.

**4:31pm**

Seto closed out of his emails, grabbed his set of store keys from the desk, and reached for his coat. The pharmacy had stopped begging for his attention an hour ago, finally in a decent place to ride out of the rest of the day. Nesbitt was surprisingly less needy than normal for the few short hours that he was here.

_Now,_ he could go home, and get something to eat. He worked straight through lunch, and dined on nothing but coffee. If Mokuba were home, he would have chided him left and right, and a lunch bag packed with love and insistence would be sitting in the fridge with a note saying “TAKE ME TOMORROW” in scribbled lettering.

Mokuba, however, was away at university, and most definitely _not_ at home. Which meant that the only thing Seto had to look forward to once he arrived, shed out of his dust-ridden clothes and found nourishment for his angry stomach, was the peace and quiet of an empty house.

There was no word from Johnson, and frankly, he stopped caring. He could only hope for the man not calling in tomorrow either, and then he could just terminate him out of the system and find someone else to fill in the role. Maybe if he was down _another_ member of store leadership, Pegasus would be more willing to get Isono over here.

Wishful thinking, but also a longshot – there were several hardworking ASMs – or even rising trainees, that could fill one of the gaps in his leadership lineup. The odds of Pegasus sending a tenured employee like Isono when they could just promote a newbie was very slim.

…Unless Isono also requested a transfer himself.

A sharp rap on the office door broke him out of his funk and Seto didn’t bother to hide the slump of his shoulders when he realized just whose vague outline was visible, through the backwards window glass.

…It was Pegasus, waving with far more enthusiasm than anyone needed to put out.

Seto clenched his jaw. Pegasus _did_ say he was coming, but in all honesty he hoped the man either forgot or just showed up after he left. _Naturally,_ the boss made his appearance when he was trying to head out the door.

The instant he and Pegasus made eye contact through the cloudy window, the waving stopped and Pegasus keyed in the code to the office door before Seto could even move to open it. Another mystery about the district manager – when he had at least six other stores to lord over, how the heck does he remember all of the different door keypad codes?

“Oh,” Pegasus pouted, but the frown didn’t quite kill the mischievous glint in his one good eye. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“I _was_ about to leave.”

Pegasus gasped dramatically and raised a hand to his chest. “Oh my – what has gotten our fearless leader in a funk today, I wonder? And after I had such exciting news to share, too.”

Seto sighed. He wanted _so_ badly to just tell him to spit out his news and go, but no matter how much the man grated on his nerves, he _was_ his boss.

Pegasus took a seat in one of the two empty office chairs and leaned back. “I know I said to contain your enthusiasm for today’s visit, but I didn’t mean _this_ much.”

“I don’t like surprises.”

“Oh pish posh.” Pegasus waved a hand dismissively. “You’ll _love_ this one.”

“I’ve been here since 6:30,” said Seto. He sat back down. “I’d _also_ love to go home.”

“Well, it’s a good thing my little visit won’t take long.” Pegasus reached into his briefcase and started to remove a file folder when he stopped, and glanced over at Seto, eye full of mirth. “Close your eyes!”

“…Seriously?”

“Yes,” Pegasus insisted, and then added in a ridiculous sing-song voice, “Now come on, the sooner you cooperate, the sooner you can go home.”

Seto huffed and closed his eyes until he heard the sound of the folder placed down onto the desk.

“Okay, you can open them!”

A quick side-eyed glare was sent off in Pegasus’s direction before he looked down at the folder. It was plain. No subject or header scribbled on the tab at the top.

Another side-eye in Pegasus’s direction, but he was only gestured to open it.

Inside sat a printout of an employee personnel file.

“I’ve found you an RXM.”


	3. Day 1: Introductions

Hermione pulled into the parking lot at precisely 1:26 that afternoon and a few realizations hit her right off the bat, before she even had the chance to even turn off the car. The first, was that her new home away from home was _tiny_. She had pulled into the parking lot from the front entrance, and really only saw the building head on, but that was enough to note that this store had to be only a fraction of the size of her old one.

If that wasn’t enough to go by, the equally small parking lot was also a dead giveaway. This lot was shaped a little differently than her old one. Her old store had parking that mostly just wrapped along the front and sides of the building. _This_ lot more or less took up the area in the front of the building and was just deep.

It was also _full_. But she expected this – the store was a Tier 4 pharmacy, the busiest one in the district.

Thankfully, _this_ store was not a 24hr store. She helped cover a few shifts overnight in one a year ago, and it was a time in her career she’d rather just forget. It was slow up until midnight, and then she and the one overnight technician were swamped with drop-offs for controlled medications that had to wait until the flip of the calendar to be processed. And once that surge died out, it was a ghost town again; the only stragglers coming in were anyone else unfortunate enough to be awake during the overnight hours and needed snacks. And the ones looking for alcohol – she remembered that store being one that sold beer and wine.

That was in a different region altogether. _Here_ , that wasn’t possible with the local laws restricting the sale of alcohol to only liquor stores. One less type of customer to worry about.

She walked through the front doors and had to do a doubletake. Sure, she expected this store to be smaller than the one she came from – that was clear from just being in the lot. But this place was _tiny_. Each aisle had to be half the size of the ones back home, and, judging by the artsy signage painted on the high walls of the sales floor, the pharmacy wasn’t even in the far back corner where she expected it to be. Interesting.

There were two front-end employees manning the counter, and if it weren’t for the one with tanned skin and the extra blond highlights in his black and reddish-purple-tinted hair, she would have thought they were twins. The tanned of the pair was in the middle of a transaction with a customer, and the other behind the photo counter putting what looked like a photobook together.

Hermione moved towards the photo counter, and the employee – ‘Yugi’, according to his badge – looked up at her.

“Hello!” he said, smiling, and for a moment she was taken back by the genuine friendliness in his tone. That wasn’t the fake Customer Service Voice that almost everyone she knew put out. Whoever Yugi was, he was happy and clearly enjoying himself, a rarity in retail work.

“Hi,” said Hermione, “Is the store manager here?”

Yugi’s face faltered slightly, but he recovered quickly. “Yeah, of course. I’ll page him for you.”

“Thanks.” She turned away from the counter to take in the rest of the store. From her spot, _now_ she could see where the pharmacy was located. Normally, it was situated in the opposite corner from the front doors. This one was along its left side wall, behind the cosmetics department. This setup certainly was weird, and she wondered if it was because the store was so small.

Navigating this place was going to take some getting used to.

The phone rang in the photo lab and she watched Yugi give the caller ID a quick peek before picking up the handset.

“Hello? …Yeah, I paged - no, someone asked to see you. …I don’t…okay, okay – hang on.”

Yugi turned back to her, spotted the white coat draped over her arm and shifted the handset along his shoulder. “Yeah, I think so. …Uh huh. Okay then, thanks.”

He smiled brightly again, vanishing any trace of irritation from talking to the person on the other end. “He’ll be out in a minute.”

“Okay, great.”

The tanned version of Yugi finished with his customers and wandered across the open space behind the front checkout counters into the photo lab. “Need a hand?”

“Yeah,” Yugi said, and he nodded to some sort of project in progress on the other end of his counter. “Can you start cutting that canvas for me while I seal this book?”

“Sure.”

Hermione took a step closer to the counter again as a door slammed from somewhere off in the distance. “Excuse me – are you two twins?”

Yugi shook his head, grinning as the other laughed. “No, but we did go to get our hair dyed at the same time! This is Atem.”

Atem gave her a wave and noticed her white jacket. “Oh – are you our new pharmacist?”

Hermione nodded. “I’m Hermione.”

Yugi beamed. “Yugi. Nice to meet you!”

Hermione glanced to her left at the cooler aisle. “Do you mind if I grab something while I wait? I left my tea at home.”

Yugi stepped around Atem and scanned his badge into the register to log in. “No go ahead.”

She quickly turned the corner of the aisle to grab a bottle of water the same time that someone else was careening around the other way and they slammed right into her. Hermione stumbled back and tried to catch herself on the endcap, but it was a hair too far from her reach. An arm shot out to try and right her, but having missed the shelving, she took whoever it was down with her and landed hard on the polished grey concrete flooring.

“S-sorry!” she gasped, winded, and dug in with her elbows to prop herself up, and Yugi and Atem hurried out from behind the counter.

“You guys okay?”

“I…think so,” she said and winced as she ran a hand along her right hip, where she landed on it. A fall in a store wouldn’t be the end of the world for her, but in a day or two it would be bruising something fierce.

She caught the dark grey manager vest on the person starting to sit up on the ground beside her and she internally groaned.

_Good work, Hermione. Your first day and you’ve already tried to take out your new boss._

Atem held a hand out to Seto. “See this is what happens when you run around here at only one walking speed.”

Seto waved off Atem’s hand, shooed him and Yugi away and got up, brushing dust off his slacks and scowling at the marks left behind. “ _Not now_ , Atem.” 

He scowled at the dust clinging to the ankles of his trousers. The floor badly needed swept. Another thing to tack onto the closing shift’s to-do list…wherever his clipboard – _oh_. It was laying beside the young woman he knocked down, beside the dropped pharmacist jacket.

_Nice going. Pegasus gives you a new RXM and you tried to kill her five seconds after she walks through the front door._

He braced one arm against the endcap and helped her to her feet. “Don’t be sorry,” he muttered, “I knocked into you.”

Hermione quickly shook her head. “I wasn’t really paying attention to who was coming around, and –”

“How about we’re both incapable of watching where were going and leave it at that?” He kept a light hold on her forearm while she righted herself. “You sure you’re alright?”

 _He_ hit the side of the endcap with his shoulder in the fall, but he wasn’t about to call the incident hotline for it. A few days of bruising and the whole thing would be a memory. But if she hurt herself that was another story entirely.

“No – I-I mean _yes_ ,” Hermione stammered, her cheeks flushed. “I’ll be fine.” She glanced up into blue eyes and felt a spark – it was gone almost instantly, but the feeling ran up her arm from where he held onto her and through her very core. She looked away and down at his hand. “Um…”

Seto quickly let go of her and stooped down to retrieve her beaded handbag from where it fell. “Here.”

She smiled at him and then passed him his lost clipboard. “Thanks. I guess now’s as good time as any to say, ‘hello, I’m Hermione Granger, your new RXM’.”

“Seto Kaiba,” he said, “Your new store manager.”

“Don’t do it – it’s a trap!” called a voice from near the front counter and Hermione glanced back. A tall male with shaggy blond hair stood next to Yugi, snickering.

Hermione laughed, a lovely sound that despite the chill in the store, warmed Seto over, and he saw how her smile reached her eyes, a pretty honey-brown that he felt himself getting lost in, until he heard Joey make some other comment to Yugi – he didn’t catch what it was exactly, but it was enough to break his eye contact and send out an icy glare in his direction.

“Wheeler, you have outdates to check.”

Joey held up his hands defensively, still grinning wide. “Okay –that’s my cue to get the heck outta here.” He turned to Yugi and Atem, “It’s like when your parents get mad at ya – suddenly it’s not _Joey_ but _Joey Wheeler_ , or in this case…ya know.”

Atem clapped him on the shoulder. “We got this up here, Joey.”

“Thanks, pal.” He gave Hermione a wave. “Good luck – he’s a nightmare.”

Seto rolled his eyes and gestured back up the cooler aisle towards a door along the side wall. “Come on.”

“Your cashiers seem to enjoy themselves here,” she said mildly, and watched, suddenly wide-eyed as he forcefully pushed open a ridiculously heavy door into a tiny locker room.

“I’m glad _someone_ is…” he said, and held the door for her. “Watch that – it _will_ probably give you a concussion if someone hits you with it.”

The moment she was through he let it go and it swung shut. She grabbed the handle and pulled. He wasn’t kidding. It _was_ heavy.

Seto’s lip curled upwards. “You don’t believe me?”

“Now I do.”

Seto tapped his fingers one by one to the numbers on the office keypad. 1-3-7-9-5. “Office code.”

She nodded. “Office code.”

He punched it in and gestured to one of the two chairs. “Let’s see how quickly we can get through this before the calls start coming in.”

Hermione slipped into her jacket and looked around. Unlike Albus Dumbledore’s desk, which she could only describe as organized chaos, Seto seemed to keep his space neat and minimal. A heavy silvery-blue dragon notepad dispenser sat on one side of the desk, next to a navy university mug that housed all of his writing pens.

A single photo frame was in the back corner, sitting beside the computer monitor, of a young man with floofy black hair and greyish-violet eyes smiling in front of what she guessed was a university building, judging by the matching shirt to the school insignia on the desk mug.

The rest of the space was devoid of any sort of decoration.

“Did they give you a new badge yet?” Seto asked, drawing her attention back to him.

“Yes,” she said, and glanced down at her new name card. ‘ _Staff Pharmacist’_ now read ‘ _Pharmacy Manager’._

Seto scrolled through a number of screens so fast that she couldn’t fathom how he even knew what he was clicking and before she knew it, a sticky note and a pen were set in front of her. “I need your employee number and your login ID to get your credentials into the register.”

Hermione blinked. “Oh, right.” She had to do this before, the day she helped out that one store overnight. A quick scribble down of her numbers and the note was passed back to him, and she couldn’t help but feel a bit awkward sitting here with him.

This was her first official transfer. A part of her figured that Seto would want to try and get to know her, since she was going to be permanently working in his store, but that didn’t seem to be the case. No small talk. Just a few questions for whatever it was he was doing to set her up in his system.

“Who’s in the photo?” she finally asked, just to break the silence.

“My brother.”

“Older or younger?”

“Younger,” Seto said. He gave the photo a fleeting glance before eyes darted to the phone on the desk as it started ringing. The _other_ office phone didn’t. Another internal call…naturally from the pharmacy.

He groaned and jammed the speaker button. “ _Yes?_ ”

Duke’s voice rang through the office. “ _Hey Boss, any chance we can get some help back here_?”

“I’m in a meeting. Help with what?”

 _“We’re…well, we’re drowning. Or…we’re gonna be at any rate_.”

In an instant, Hermione watched Seto’s calm demeanor fizzle away into one of complete ire. He exhaled loudly and glared at the phone.

“I got you all caught up while I was back there.”

_“I know. And…it’s not that we aren’t doing anything, so don’t start getting on us for that. It’s….”_

Duke’s voice suddenly quieted down. “ _It’s the pharmacist._ ”

Seto closed his eyes and shook his head. “Of course it is. What hasn’t Kemo done _this_ time?”

“ _He’s not reviewing anything. Nothing’s printing to fill because he’s taking his sweet ass time doing his calls.”_

She watched Seto’s eye twitch.

“ _Kemo_ ,” Seto began, in a quiet, eerily even voice, “was supposed to have those calls finished _three hours ago_.”

“ _I know_.”

“How many are sitting around on the counter?”

“ _Nothing. Ishizu filled everything. But there’s 80 about to drop once he gets off his butt – or whenever the closing pharmacist gets here.”_

“Your closing pharmacist is in the office with me. Turn on Flex for now so the Support Center will start reviewing for us. Do you know where the Floater Feedback forms are?”

“ _No, but I can ask Ishizu. She knows._ ”

“Good. Have everyone back there fill one out for this guy and maybe _this_ time, the Scheduler won’t keep sending him here.”

He hung up and slowly turned to her. “Welcome to Governor Lane. This is what you get to inherit.”

Seto got up and held open the office door. “Might as well give you the five-second tour of the place.”

“I’ve never seen a store this small,” she said as they left the little locker room. “This is really it?”

“Yeah,” Seto said, and led her around the perimeter of the sales floor and stopped at the first door they reached along the back wall. Like the office door, this one also had a keypad, but the door itself seemed to be off its track and didn’t close properly in the frame. Anyone would just be able to push it open. “Stockroom.”

She nodded. “Stockroom. What happened to the door?”

“The hinge is broken,” said Seto, “According to Yugi, who has been in this store since it first opened, this is a recurring problem. People prop the door open, the hinge goes out. Someone comes out and fixes it. They tell everyone to stop propping the door. They do it anyway, and here we are, back to square one.”

He led her down a small side hallway near the pharmacy and into the employee breakroom, where he grabbed his mug off the drying rack and set it against his coffee maker. “Coffee?”

“No thank you,” said Hermione and stared blankly at the rather high-end single-serve brewer, so out of place among the rest of the plain appliances and bare bulletin boards. “Is…is that yours?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.” Hermione glanced around the small kitchenette. “I thought most stores had that ancient coffee pot in it.”

Seto snorted and popped his coffee pod into the machine. “I pitched that thing on my first day.”

While the coffee maker kicked in to start heating the water, Seto leaned against the counter, crossed his arms, and stared at her.

“I looked up the numbers for the store you came from,” he said, “This isn’t a Tier 2 pharmacy. I hope you’re ready to get your hands dirty.”

“Absolutely.”

Seto made a slight ‘hnn’ noise, clearly unconvinced. “It’s not just the numbers. It’s about getting these technicians out of this pit they’ve flung themselves into called _self-entitlement_. There’s been no true leadership in that pharmacy for far longer than _I’ve_ been here. No one has a clue to what ‘ _Workflow’_ even is, and that’s been a standard op for _years_.”

He reached around for his mug once the brewer turned off and cupped his hands around it. “There’s only so much I can do back there. I’m not a pharmacist, and I sure as hell aren’t a pharmacy manager. If I’m not standing back there for most of my day, nothing gets done. And I _can’t_ stay back there for my entire day. I have a store to run."

To her complete surprise – _and_ horror, because that mug still had to be scalding, Seto chugged the coffee like a shot and didn't even flinch as it burned his throat on the way down. “Tell me, Hermione – how many employees did you see when you first walked in?”

She blinked – definitely not a question she expected. “Oh, uh. Two? Three, after we crashed.”

“Three cashiers.” Seto set the mug on the counter. “No leadership?”

“Uh, no…” she said, “but I only just got here, and I didn’t make it around the store yet. I’m sure they’re around and I’ll meet them then.”

Seto scowled. “No. You won’t. I’m the only one here for the entire day. Oscar Johnson never came back after his last shift four days ago. His _roommate_ dropped off his store keys because he was too much a coward to come do it himself. And Owen Nesbitt? He called off tonight for the third day in a row. I can’t call in my other shift lead because he did two doubles back-to-back and is probably still asleep.”

Hermione’s jaw dropped. “You have only two leaders?” Her old store had _five,_ and that didn’t even count Dumbledore.

“With Nesbitt? One and a half is more accurate. I took over a store run by keyholders. The store manager was let go. So was the ASM. The RXM was axed months ago. They’ve been without a staff pharmacist for even longer.”

“Surely a nearby store can send _someone_ to help….”

Seto shot her a ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ look and started to clean out the brewer “I already brought that up to Pegasus. He’s under the impression that we don’t need it. _Meanwhile_ , I haven’t had a day off since I got here, because even when I’m _not_ here, I have my leadership blowing up my phone because they can’t handle running the store themselves without me. Because the _old_ managers taught them _nothing_.”

He led her back to the office and opened the safe. It took a moment of him digging through the top shelf inside before he withdrew a prescription vial labeled RXM. Inside was a set of keys.

Seto started to hand it out to her, but stopped a foot from her outstretched arm. “They’re going to test you. You’re fresh meat to them. The first thing they’re going to do – _all_ of them, is see how much they can get away with. I _know_ they’ll listen to _me_. They hate it when I’m back there for longer than a Code Yellow. I need to know that they’ll listen to _you_.”

Hermione looked him right in the eyes – vibrant blue and full of fire (though she suspected some of that came from caffeine), but his face looked tired. Minerva said he had taken over the store scant weeks ago. Had he really worked _every day_ without a break? No one could keep going for that long without collapsing.

But she couldn’t lie to him either.

“They offered me this position and I was hesitant to take it,” Hermione admitted. “Not because the store would be busier than the one I came from, or that it went without a manager for so long…it’s because I’m _not_ a natural-born leader. I’ve been with you for only a short time and I can see that you are one. You’re a voice of authority to them and they listen, whether it’s out of fear or respect, or maybe a little bit of both. …But I don’t have that. It’s something I want to develop, and I couldn’t do that where I was.”

Seto stayed quiet. She matched his gaze head on, didn’t waver, and also didn’t tell him something that he wanted to hear just for the sake of placating him.

He liked her already.

“Did the technicians at Albus’s store listen to you? If you asked Joe the Senior Tech to take out the trash before he left, or Mary at the drive-thru lane to take care of the delete list in the first hour of her day, would they do it?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

Hermione didn’t say anything for what felt like a good ten minutes, though it had to have been only a fraction of that time. “Well it would come back on them if they didn’t,” she said lamely.

“Did you get along with everyone there?”

“I’d say so,” she said, “I don’t think any of us had any problems with each other.”

“Then they follow your directive because they respect you. If they don’t respect you they’re not going to want to work, and they’ll make your life a living hell.” Seto gestured vaguely off in the direction of where the pharmacy was on the other side of the breakroom wall. “ _They_ respect me, but some of them are also afraid of me, and that’s fine. I’m not here to be their friend and hold their hand. My job is to keep this place running and I can’t do it all myself.”

“Is that what you need me to do?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. It didn’t sound right in her head. “You want soldier following your order to take care of what you need done in the pharmacy so you can work on the front end?”

“No, my _want_ and my _need_ are two separate things. What I _need_ is someone to be able to bring us out of the gutter. I’ve spoken to both Filius and Albus – I have a rough idea of the kind of person you are, and I don’t think you’ll have a problem getting them to work for you. What I worry is that they’ll think you’re _too nice_ and bulldoze you into the ground.”

“What I _don’t_ want is for you to think my voice is the only one that matters. I _don’t_ want a subordinate. You’re not a staff pharmacist or a floater. You’re my RXM. That’s not a lower position on this store’s broken hierarchy. We’re _equals._ ”

He looked down at the keys in his hand and then back up at her. “What I _want_ is a partner.”

The keys were held out further, and this time, she took them with a firm nod.

“Maybe we can both benefit each other.”

Seto raised an eyebrow.

Hermione gave him a slight smile. “I’ve never been a manager before – and despite what traits I may or may not really be missing, I know I have a lot to learn, and I know I can learn a lot from you. …And maybe…”

She held out her empty hand. “…you’ll be able to have a weekend off. One of these days.”

He shook on it. A new RXM was only a piece of the puzzle, but he was already working on a plan for fixing the front end of the store – and his leadership problem. “…One of these days.”


	4. Day 26: Assholes in the Drive Thru

Ryou Bakura set down the phone and pivoted on his heel to glance back at the pharmacist station. “Hermione? I hate to do this, but I need you to talk to this person.”

“What’s wrong?”

“He keeps insisting that I’m wrong and that he has refills left on his medication – which, by the way, were never part of his prescription in the first place.”

Hermione moved out from her spot and he stepped out of the way so she could take over for him. A quick peek at the computer screen showed the patient’s name was Ushio and the scan of his order in the system showed clear as day that there were no extra fills.

“Mr. Ushio?” she said loudly into the phone, “We can’t refill this for you.”

Ushio, a man with both a pointy hair, a large nose and equally large eyebrows, started screaming obscenities into the speaker loud enough that Hermione had to pull the phone away from her ear, _and_ that Ishizu paused from counting out 360 tablets in the far back corner of the pharmacy to stare off towards the Drive-Thru lane, wide-eyed.

“No, your script does _not_ have refills on it,” Hermione said the moment that Ushio ran out of air to scream with, her voice stern. “This type of medication doesn't allow it. We would need a new prescription from your doctor’s office.”

She steeled herself as another verbal onslaught was unleashed, and never before was she so happy to have the insanely thick pane of glass between her and his car to catch all the spit flying out of his mouth.

“ _No_ , we can’t just hold the medication for you. If your doctor writes you a new prescription, you have to bring it in, and _only_ then can we start working on it.”

Ryou stayed off to the side, out of sight from the window. Ushio seemed to quiet down, at least a little bit because he couldn’t hear the man straining his voice anymore. But at the same time, he could feel Hermione getting more and more agitated with each passing second.

Hermione clicked through Ushio’s profile and then glared through the window. “Like I _told_ you, we would need a new prescription, but I can already tell you that even if you just went and got it right now and brought it back we wouldn’t be able to fill it until at least Sunday.”

_And_ there – the swearing up and down started once more. Ryou cringed.

Without missing a beat, she added, “Based on how the doctor directed you to take this, you should still have two week’s worth left. …Your insurance isn’t going to cover a new script until then, so there’s nothing more I can really do.”

She set the phone down, and turned to Ryou as the car angrily drove off. “There you are.”

Ryou didn’t bother hiding how visibly relieved he was, knowing the customer was gone. “Thank you!”

* * *

“ _Oh Mylanta_ ,” Mai groaned. “if I have to listen to that guy _one more time_ ….”

Duke poked his head around the wall of ready bins. “Want a break for a while? I’ll swap you if you want the counter out here.”

Mai shook her head. “No, it’s just another Looney Toon on some conspiracy that the government is going to take his meds away if he doesn’t get them on time. I don’t what it is about today that it’s bringing out all the weirdos, but I’m not here for it.”

“It’s the full moon tonight,” said Ryou mildly, “We’re going to blame it on that.”

Mai cracked a smile as another car pulled into the lane. “Sounds good to me.” She picked up the phone and peered out the window. “Hi, welcome to DMNO Pharmacy. Are you picking up?”

_“Yeah. Last name is Wong.”_

She typed the name into the queue and then glanced back at the customer. “I don’t have anything ready. Looks like there was one dropped off about ten minutes ago but that's still processing.”

A scoff through the speaker. “ _You mean it_ isn’t _ready yet?”_

“No,” Mai said slowly. “We’re still working on it. I can have it ready in about 15 minutes.”

The woman in the car huffed and then slumped back in her seat as a car pulled up behind her, and Mai raised an eyebrow before turning the call back on. “Hon, while we’re finishing your prescription, can you at least pull around so we can help the car behind you?”

_“No.”_

“Your prescription isn’t ready yet. Until it is, you’re holding up the line and we have other patients that need helped.”

_“I’m not moving until I have my medication – and I sure as hell aren’t paying for it since it wasn’t ready on time.”_

_What?!_ Mai’s eye twitched. That wasn’t how this worked at all – and the script wasn’t even due for another ten minutes! Did this lady just drop off and then immediately jump into the lane expecting this to be ready? This wasn't a fast food restaurant. Processing a medication wasn't like waiting on fries or nuggets from the burger joint across the street.

“Ma’am we don’t negotiate the price for your co-pay after your insurance.”

Miss Wong didn’t answer her, but didn’t start her car to get out of the lane either.

Mai slammed the phone down and called across the pharmacy. “Ishizu, Hon, I need one for Wong, and I need it _fast_.”

A record four minutes later, bag in hand, Mai returned to the window and dropped all hints of her Customer Service voice. “Alright, Miss Wong, verify the address please.”

She could barely hear the mumble through the speaker, but the address checked out. She ran the script through the register and extended the drawer out to the car. “Your total is $1.”

_“I said I wasn’t paying for it.”_

Mai shrugged. “That’s fine. Then that was your time you wasted in my lane, because I’m not giving it to you for free.”

Four quarters were then violently thrown through the drawer.

* * *

Duke picked up the phone from his station at the inside counter and hit the button for the Drive-Thru Lane. “Hi, welcome to DMNO Pharmacy. We’ll be with you in just a moment.” He didn’t bother waiting for the customer to answer and hung up. He had a customer still in front of him at the counter, and the other technician in the back at the filling station was on the phone with an insurance company. Mako was at the consultation window, explaining that the store brand of pain reliever was just as good as the regular brand to a rather skeptic patient. So long as the person ahead at the counter was just picking up and not doing anything complex like getting an immunization, he’d be at the window in moments. And if Ryou got off the phone first? Even better.

He was halfway through ringing out his customer, who really _was_ just picking up, when the sensor alert for the lane went off again. Another car waiting.

When he got to the window, Duke glanced at the mirror installed over the lane that someone managed to put back up after Seto had taken it down – twice. There were at least three cars in line, including the one directly in front of him.

“Hi, thanks for your patience, how can I help you?”

The person in the driver's seat didn’t answer, and seemed to be in a heated conversation with whoever else was in the car with them. From behind him, he vaguely heard the door to the pharmacy open and close. Mai must have returned from her break.

Duke frowned. “ _Hi, welcome to DMNO Pharmacy,”_ he said, louder this time. The people in the car still didn’t hear him.

“Hey – Mai!”

“What’s up?”

Duke nodded to the window. “I got what looks like another domestic dispute going on here.”

Mai groaned loudly and reached for the phone at the pickup window. “I got you. Don’t worry, it’ll be over in a minute.” She picked up the phone and set it to page. **"Can I have the Store Manager to the Drive Thru, please?** "

In the meantime, Duke tried again to raise his patient’s attention, to no success, and he finally gave up and went back to filing the latest round of finished scripts into the ready bins.

Seto arrived moments later, a huge scowl on his face. “What’s going on?”

Duke jerked his thumb to the window. “I got another distracted dingus.”

Seto stepped to the window and pulled his phone from his vest pocket. He picked up the handset and laid it on the counter while he scrolled through some app on his cell with the other, until he seemed to find what it was he was looking for.

He held out his phone to the speaker end of the handset and within seconds, a deafening airhorn rang out through the entire pharmacy, but more importantly out into the Drive-Thru lane, and to his immense satisfaction, the customers screaming at each other in the car immediately stopped, scared out of their wits by the surprise noise.

Seto set his cell down and put the store phone up against his ear. “ _Thank you for holding up my lane_ ,” he snarled. “ _Now that I have your attention, are you picking up or dropping off_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mylanta is the name of an over-the-counter medication for treating heartburn and upset stomach.


	5. Day 73: There's Something Not Quite Right With That Guy....

**_“Manager dial 326, please_**.”

That was Téa’s voice.

Isono sighed and set down his clipboard of notes. He sat in the office with Seto and Hermione on their weekly store meeting, going over the strengths and opportunities found from the past week. Not a lot of strengths… _plenty_ of opportunities.

One of them involved trying to find a way to _not_ get Kemo to return to their store, but it seemed the district pharmacist scheduler enjoyed nothing more than to make their lives difficult, despite the handful of terrible reviews made by all of the technicians.

He rolled his chair closer to the desk and put the phone on speaker.

“ _Hello?”_

“What’s up?”

Téa’s voice was quiet through the phone, as if she was trying really hard to avoid being overheard. “ _Okay, um…there’s a guy here, sitting at the photo kiosks, and…I think - oh! Yugi – can you help on register for a second, thanks! – anyway, I think….that there’s something not quite right with him.”_

Isono raised an eyebrow. “Okay…?”

“ _I asked him if needed help, or a phone cord to print photos, you know – because he was just sitting there…and he was just mumbling under his breath. And I think he was giving Atem weird looks before. Can…can you come up front please?”_

“Of course.” Isono hung up the phone and looked to his two superiors. “I’ll be right back.”

Seto wheeled his chair around to the edge of his desk where the surveillance monitors were set up, but he couldn’t see around the edge of the photo lab. The kiosks were just out of sight. From the corner of the lab camera he saw Isono walk around the corner, and then dip back out of the frame.

“In any case,” Seto said, returning back to his original train of thought, before Téa’s announcement broke his concentration. “It’s time we stopped catering to the technicians’ perfect schedules. They’ve abused the system for far too long. It’s ridiculous to only have people wanting to work during the day and stack the morning to then leave the night shift emptyhanded.”

“I agree,” said Hermione, “But I also can’t have them calling out every time they’re scheduled to close.”

“Let them,” Seto said, to her complete surprise. “Raptor and Underwood were hired _specifically_ to be night and weekend employees. That’s what we _needed_. Our senior techs only have to close one night a week. Everyone else rotates. But to not want to work nights and weekends at all is unacceptable and we _will_ be bringing it up in next weekend’s store meeting.”

“It’s not right on Duke and Ryou – and Mai even – to be constantly picking up the extra hours because they keep calling out,” said Hermione, “Mai’s worked two doubles already this month, and I know she says she loves the overtime, but it’s not fair to her, or to the others to have to be constantly asked to stay.”

“If Underwood and Raptor want to play the game, then the Attendance Policy will –”

Atem’s voice rang over the PA system. **_“Manager, call on line 101!”_**

Seto scowled and reached for the phone when Hermione craned her neck to peer at the cameras, and pointed to the feed showing the photo register. “Oh – there, Isono picked it up.”

“Oh.” Seto leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What I’d like to happen, eventually, is for the senior techs to collaborate and make the technician schedule themselves. I don’t have any issue with you doing it, but there’s still a lot we both need to go over and for you to learn, and I think it will be one less item on your plate if we can just pass that off to someone else.”

Hermione slowly nodded. “Mai and Ishizu at least get along with each other well enough that I don’t see that being a problem.”

“Yeah…” Seto squinted, brow furrowed, and scooted closer to the cameras. “What is he doing….?”

“Who?” Hermione asked. “The…customer?”

“No…Isono.” He swiveled the monitor so she could see it and brought up the first register station, one that was barely used even on the busiest of days. Atem and Téa were standing behind the counter across from Isono, and he had just beckoned Yugi and Fuguta over to join him. Isono vaguely gestured over towards the photo lab at least twice before the group broke up, and Isono left the front counter and moved back towards the office.

“What’s going on up there?” asked Seto, but Isono moved right past him to the phone and dialed out to the emergency hotline.

“…Hi, I’m calling from the DMNO Pharmacy on Governor Lane, and we have a rather… _disturbed_ individual here that might be a threat to himself or others, and would – I’m sorry? …Yes, white tshirt and ripped jeans. Uh huh…that’s him. …Well he’s sitting at our photo kiosk right now.”

Isono squinted at the monitors. As he requested, Fuguta stayed behind and was hanging around on the computer in the photo lab, to discreetly keep an eye and ear on the man around the corner.

“…I’m almost positive he’s not going anywhere, but if someone can come pick him up and get him somewhere that can help him, that would be _great_.”

Hermione watched him nervously, and then glanced back at the camera monitor, but whoever was sitting around the kiosks was still out of the frame.

Isono hung up moments later, and dropped back into the seat he vacated what felt like eons ago.

Hermione bit her lip. “Is…is everything alright?”

Grey eyes met Seto's blue ones in a dead stare. “I thought when I transferred over here that these shenanigans were going to _stop_.”

The corner of Seto’s lip curled upwards. “Just like old times then. So what happened?”

“We have an oddball sitting up there,” said Isono. “Asked him if he needed help with anything, and he started going on about how someone – a bunch of people, probably – had wronged him and that they were going to get some sort of comeuppance soon.”

“ _What!?”_

“Yeah. Didn’t specify who or what they did or didn’t do, but that phone call was from the bank across the street. Apparently our guy had wandered inside, asking if they had any weapons, and according to the police, ours isn't the first business he's wandered into today.”

Seto and Hermione exchanged near-identical raised-brow glances.

“So he’s just sitting up there?” asked Seto.

“And muttering under his breath the same stuff over and over, yeah. Fuguta is keeping an eye on him. But…there is definitely something not right with that man.”

* * *

Isono logged into the store emails and started checking off through the communications he missed. The day shift had long left, and it was just him, Téa, and Atem rounding out the front-end staff for the evening. The police arrived had arrived within minutes of him placing the call, and he was honestly surprised at how little a fuss the strange man had made at their attempts to get him out. With the number of threatening statements he had made earlier, he expected a lot of resistance and a lot of yelling.

Instead, three officers sat with him at the kiosk and spoke quietly to him for a while before they all just left.

It was all very anticlimactic, but at the same time a great relief to not have to call Security Ops and alert them to a crisis that could have otherwise occurred on company property.

Thank goodness the guy wasn’t armed, and his odd quest walking into local businesses inquiring about them turned up consistently empty.

When the clock struck 7:00, he headed up front to start closing down and resetting registers for the next day. Barely a step out of the aisle he chose to walk through and Atem waved him down with one hand, the other holding onto the nearest phone’s handset.

“Isono, there’s a call for a manager from…the hospital?”

Isono wrinkled his nose. The hospital? Why would someone there be calling _him_? 

“Are they on hold?”

Atem shook his head. “Didn’t park it yet.” He held out the handset and moved out of the way.

Isono took it from him and leaned up against the giant cabinet housing their photo printers. “This is Isono, how can I help you?”

“ _Hi…I’m Shizuka, from Domino City Medical Center. We have a patient here with us that was brought in from your store….”_

_Ah_ , he said to himself. _This is about_ that _guy._

_“…and this may sound a little strange, but we’re wondering if he told you guys anything?”_

“If he told us anything?”

_“The officers that brought him didn’t say too much, but we can’t seem to get him to speak to us, and we were wondering what he may have said or done to get him admitted, if you knew?”_

“I see….”

Eyes closed, he took a deep breath and shook his head. This was the sort of reason he transferred _out_ of his old store – other than the fact that Seto Kaiba practically _begged_ him. Their old store was in a less than savory part of the city and was no stranger to the number of oddballs that walked through the doors at all hours of the day and night.

At least Seto’s new store was in a better neighborhood.

_“…Is there anything you’re able to share that can help us help him?”_

“Most of what I’ve got are second-hand accounts, but sure…..”

As he spoke into the phone, he made a mental note that the _next_ time something _weird_ happened around here, he was going to let the store manager deal with it.

It _was_ , after all, why Seto’s name was on the front door, not his.


	6. Day 102: "Uh...sorry I opened it."

If there was any one true constant about working in retail, it was that no matter how hard you tried to make it for them, people would still find a way to steal.

Oh, the electronics kept disappearing? One week later the entire aisle has locks on the edge of the peg hooks, and a customer service call button to get all the headphones and phone chargers down from where they hung out all day.

That didn’t stop someone from just ripping the package right off the hook itself.

Oh, the razor cartridges kept walking? Just put them in locking cases that will sound the security gates at the front door. Well, never mind – the ticket to get the electronic gates fixed just…went unanswered so what’s the point? 

Between the lockboxes and the electronic spider-wraps – and alarm gates that work only 60% of the time, Hermione was sure that would curb most of the high-end theft. Until she found a cluster of torn-open packages after leaving the restroom one Wednesday afternoon. They were just sitting, plain as day, on the middle of the sunglasses display as if they belonged there. An empty package of toothache relief, and a box of three pregnancy tests…but only two tests were left in the box.

When she wandered the front of the store, and finally found Fuguta along the side wall, replacing a bunch of outdated price signs, he took the empty boxes from her with a sigh.

“Thanks,” he said. “Another couple to add to the pile.”

She raised an eyebrow. “The pile?”

“Yeah.” Fuguta gestured towards the door to the stockroom. “Tonight’s been the first in a while where I had the time to really go through and find all the hidden little gems around the store.”

Hermione frowned. “And these people just get away with this, all the time?”

Fuguta shrugged. “We can’t do anything. The company would rather us be safe, than get into an altercation with a customer and have something potentially go sideways. As they put it – money or drugs or product can be replaced. _We_ can’t. So if someone is honestly that desperate for…”

He turned one of the empty packages around in his hand. “…Tooth-numbing gel, let them have it.”

Well, she couldn’t fault with that logic too much. Especially not after the company had that huge scandal last year over a manager accusing a customer of shoplifting – and they were _wrong_. That also explained why all the locks in the electronics aisle eventually disappeared.

“But to not be able to stop someone you actually _see_ rip open a box and try to make off with it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Fuguta, “They’re going to find a way to get what they want one way or another. Is it frustrating, knowing we can’t do anything? Absolutely. But the company has a hands-off approach to it. If _they_ don’t care that the stores’ shrink percentage is high, then why should I? And it’s not worth my life to try and stop a lunatic from making off with cold medicine shoved down his pants.”

It was a conversation she didn’t dwell on much after that, until a night she was scheduled to close several weeks later. The moment the clock struck 10pm, Ryou started pulling the tills from the registers and she left the pharmacy to pull the gate shut, just in case there were stragglers left in the store. It wasn’t common, this late at night, but still – knowing their luck someone would try bum-rushing the gate at 10:01.

Once Ryou was out, she locked the gate, and could hear Nesbitt and Joey talking up front, and what sounded like a customer in the store somewhere near the front counter – or she hoped so. The last time there was a customer in the store past closing, they spent 20 minutes at checkout, going over the price of every item in their basket and _then_ decided, after it was all totaled up, that they didn’t want most of it.

Tonight, however, the closer she got to the front of the store, it sounded more like some loudmouth putting up a fuss about showing his ID for cigarettes, and she groaned. They were getting held up to leave because someone couldn’t drive the extra four seconds to the nearest gas station where he wouldn’t get carded.

Hermione changed course and then made her way towards the complete opposite end of the store. Something was going down this way – she could hear it. Sounded almost like a product getting ripped open.

She stopped in front of the electronics aisle, but it was empty. The package-ripping was coming from the _next_ one, and there he was – cigarette-buying-man’s friend (probably), standing directly in front of the display of dish detergents, going all out on a box of headphones.

He was too busy destroying the cardboard to notice her come to stand right behind him, and in her most exasperated deadpan – a tone that sounded far more like Seto’s than her own – she said, “ _Can I help you_?”

The guy stopped and turned to look at her. “Oh, uh, I was just checking these out.”

Hermione blinked, her face blank.

“You see, my wife – her headphones died and I needed to see if these were the right ones….”

Hermione took a step closer to him as he rattled on about how his likely nonexistent wife was very particular about…a _piece_ of the headphone headband, and all she could do was raise a quizzical eyebrow, cross her arms, and drum her fingers against the edge of her elbow.

The guy got caught and now he was just spitting complete nonsense.

“…And…uh…yeah,” he finally finished lamely and looked down at the box in his hands. “I guess these aren’t it. Um…sorry I opened it, just had to be sure, you know?”

“Uh huh,” she said flatly. First off – he didn’t open the box. He _mutilated_ it. And second – the _thing_ he was so particular about was visible right on the oversized image on the back of the box, which maybe he would have noticed if he took two seconds to look before tearing right through it like a child opening birthday presents. She held out her hand. “ _I’ll_ put that back, thanks.”

Hopefully that would entice the guy to leave and then they could all go home.

…Nope. Sticky Fingers wandered back into the electronics aisle and started talking about what his wife was looking for and picked up another set of headphones, still rambling over his plight. Hermione clutched the ruined package tightly in her hand and wondered just how much trouble she’d get in if she beat the guy over the head with it.

“…I guess…I ought to just have her come in and pick out what she wants, huh?”

_If it gets you to stop destroying our product? Sure_ , she thought, but instead of saying it out loud, Hermione merely nodded. “Right – another day, because we’re closed now.”

“Oh…right,” he said mindlessly, as if he _didn’t_ just walk into the store with his friend two minutes before closing.

She led him up front, where Cigarette Guy was waiting for him, and they both shuffled off towards the exit doors.

Hermione slammed the ruined box of headphones down onto the counter and glared at Nesbitt.

“I’m ready to leave now.”

Nesbitt shook his head, muttering under his breath, and started after the pair to lock the front doors behind them. “You and me both.”


	7. Day 137: "Uh...Where are the Band-Aids?"

Hermione sighed and clicked through her current patient’s insurance profile. _One_ of these… _nine_ discount cards had to work on this prescription, because the woman would _not_ stop calling to find out when her medication would be ready, and she was ready to disconnect all of the phones and jam them through the drive-thru window drawer, just to be rid of them.

Out of the corner of her eye, she vaguely saw someone stop in front of the consultation window and lean on the counter.

“I’ll be with you in just a moment,” she said and gave the customer the briefest of glances before returning to her cranky customer problem. But then she had to do a double-take at the grinning redhead staring back at her.

“Ron!”

“Long time no see!”

All desire to fix the insurance nightmare in front of her gone, she moved to the consult window and leaned up against the wall. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m working here tonight,” Ron said, as if it were obvious. “I guess whoever was supposed to close called out or whatever.”

“I’m surprised they called you,” said Hermione, “Our stores aren’t close to each other by any means.”

Ron shook his head. “No….but I guess your store is desperate otherwise they wouldn’t have reached out.”

“Well, I didn’t hear anything about someone calling off, but I only just got here today too,” said Hermione, “I saw Fuguta earlier, but I suppose he opened by himself.”

Ron shrugged. “I guess. I didn’t even see your new boss here either.”

Hermione shook her head. “Seto? I don’t think he’s here today. Fuguta mentioned that he was at the district office. Some big conference I guess.”

Oh, she couldn't wait to hear how _that_ went. It was supposed to be an all-day event, and Seto would be stuck there with Pegasus the entire time. There were bound to be stories upon his return tomorrow.

She took a glance back at her station. Mai’s finished filling totes were piled up next to her desk. “I’m going to have to get back before all of those go overdue. I’m not sure who you have up front with you tonight, but all of the cashiers here are very nice and reliable. You should have a smooth night.”

Ron crossed his fingers. “Here’s hoping.”

* * *

**9:15pm**

“Hey – Ron! I need ya!” Joey called across the store. He spotted Ron in the back aisle, straightening the cough drops and flagged him down. “You got to clear my screen.”

“What’s up?” asked Ron.

“I forgot to add this lady’s coupon,” said Joey, annoyed. This was only the third time he had tried to ring up this customer’s stuff, and each time he had a different problem to fix. Product A wasn’t on sale. Then after he fixed it she forgot to use her rewards points. _Now_ , she didn’t give him her stupid coupon until the last possible second.

“Oh, sure.” Ron moved behind the counter and was halfway to scanning his badge and overriding the sale when the power in the store suddenly winked out. Within three seconds the lights flipped back on and the registers started their unnaturally slow reboot.

Joey’s shoulders slumped and he looked back at Ron, avoiding eye contact with the visibly-agitated customer in front of him and gestured to the register computer. “So what’re the odds that the system will remember all the stuff I scanned in already?”

“Sorry, mate.”

Joey angled his head back, stared up at the high ceiling, and let out a strangled sort of whine.

With another customer standing at the photo counter, Ron gave Joey a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and then walked over to help them.

“Picking up pictures?”

He listened for the customer’s last name and then crouched down into the photo ready bins to search for their order. With his focus on both digging and trying to get the register to come up – _Dammit this was taking its sweet time! –_ he didn’t pay much attention to the gruff voice that spoke up maybe a foot or two away from him.

“Hey, you uh, have any bandages?”

Without looking up or missing a beat, Ron nodded. “Aisle 11.”

“Thanks man.”

The register had finished its initial reboot (finally) by the time Ron located the customer’s photos, but it still wasn’t working properly since it wouldn’t register the customer’s rewards account or recognize her debit card.

Ron started off with his usual apologies for the delay, but she wasn’t paying attention. Instead she was turned to the side, in the direction the bandage-asking customer had wandered.

“Is – is he _bleeding_?”

_What_?

Ron twisted around. Sure enough, little sporadic drops of blood trailed after the guy from where he crossed the entire front of the store and then disappeared down the cooler aisle, despite his telling the guy that bandages were in Aisle 11.

_Oh jeez._

“Hey – mate!” Ron called, but before he could get out from behind the counters, Joey stopped him.

“Oi – before you run, can you void this – the register came back up.”

Ron sighed.

By the time he was finally able to get out and look for him, the guy was wandering back up front, a tiny box of adhesive bandages in his hand that had no chance of fitting over the massive moon-shaped cut over his kneecap. The customer at the photo counter, still blessedly waiting patiently for the register to accept her debit card, pulled her phone from her pocket and disappeared up the nearest aisle.

“Mate,” Ron began, “What the hell happened to you?”

“Fell,” the guy mumbled, and waved the bandages between Joey and Ron’s registers. “Who’s gonna ring me.”

Ron’s eyes briefly met the photo customer down the aisle and she shook her head at him and pointed to her phone.

“Uh, our registers are still down. We can’t ring up anyone.”

Never mind that Joey’s customer’s receipt printed not 10 seconds ago and cranky coupon lady was finally out the door. Forget the tiny little droplets that went across the front of the store when he walked in, this guy was _bleeding_ now. Tiny droplets evolved into blotches, and then _puddles_. And since he chose to wear flipflops instead of actual shoes, blood continued to trickle down leg, across his foot and onto the floor.

Bleedout Guy let out a fussy huffy noise. “ _Seriously_?”

“We had a power outage a few minutes ago.” Ron explained. “But uh…can we call someone to help you with that? That looks _deep_.”

He was pretty sure Hermione was able to apply first aid if absolutely needed, but the guy had a sort of glazed look in his eye. Was he…high? Drunk? Combination of both?

Car keys dangled in the guy’s hand. Did he drive here? How long had he been bleeding? If the puddle currently pooling around the guy’s feet was anything to go on, he could have lost a lot. What if he left here, passed out on the road, and got into an accident? What if he seriously hurt himself even further - or worse, what if he hurt someone else?

They couldn’t technically trap him in the store, but maybe they could stall him until his customer’s call for help got answered.

“No,” the man said gruffly. “I live around the corner. You gonna ring me or not?”

He reached into his pocket and to Ron’s dismay, pulled out a $10 note for his bandages. He was paying cash, which would run through the register just fine, no matter how bad a shape it was in due to the outage.

“Well, the registers here are still not working,” said Ron. He had an idea on how to stall him out, but it would just let the guy drag more blood through the store. Not ideal, but it was better than sending him on his way.

And they now only had 30 minutes to closing.

So much for getting home on time tonight.

“…But we can try back in pharmacy, in case one of those are up?”

Bleedout man grumbled. “I suppose.”

Ron led the customer back to the pharmacy. Hermione was near the front counter, filing the day’s invoices, and her eyes widened to the size of saucers once she noticed all of the blood.

“You’re first aid certified, right?” Ron asked.

She nodded. “Y-yes…but I don’t think I have anything in the kit back here large enough for that….”

“I don’ need help!” the man snapped. “Just gimme the band-aids!”

The photo customer was off to the side, keeping any other last-minute stragglers from walking through the guy’s mess. A siren could be heard approaching in the distance and Ron prayed to every higher power he could think of that they were coming for them and not some car accident on a highway somewhere.

Bleedout, unfortunately, also heard it and threw the bandages angrily on the counter and stormed for the exit. “I TOLD YOU I DIDN’T NEED HELP!”

“Sir – wait!” Ron went after him, and made a point to move up a different aisle to avoid the trail left behind. But the guy kept swearing his entire way out the door.

“We’re just concerned for your safety!”

The man ignored him and got into his car. Ron took a hesitant step out into the parking lot. Two police vehicles rounded the corner and he waved his arms to flag them down.

“HEY!”

He didn’t realize the officers even saw him in the dark, but the two cars rounded the corner into the lot and effectively sandwiched Bleedout’s vehicle, keeping him in place. The sirens got louder and an ambulance arrived moments later.

Hermione carefully sidestepped her way to the front and stood near the doors with Joey while Ron spoke to one of the officers while the other one spoke to the patient.

“What’s going on?”

“Some guy was bleeding out and wanted band-aids,” said Joey. “You know, Ron pointed him right to the first aid aisle, before we knew the guy was gushin’ out his innards, ya know? And where does this crazy dude go?”

He looked at her, and Hermione couldn’t help but shrug. “I…I guess the first aid aisle? He had a box of something in his hand that he wanted to buy.”

“Yeah, well…he walked through the front door, went all the way across the front, down the cooler aisle, across the back, _then_ to first aid, and then up the candy aisle to the registers….”

She glanced behind her and wrinkled her nose. “T-that’s a _lot_ of blood. And he really put up such a fuss over help?”

Joey nodded. “Yeah. Makes me wonder if he was up to some shady stuff before wanderin’ in here.”

Ron didn’t return inside until almost 10 minutes before closing. The police and the ambulance were still outside treating the guy.

“We got any customers still left in here?”

Joey shook his head. “They uh…didn’t stick around when they saw the crime scene in here.”

Ron turned off the front doors and slammed them shut. “Good. We’re closed now. …How bad is it?”

Joey shook his head. “ _Bad_.”

“ _Great_.”

“I have…a lot of disinfectant wipes in the pharmacy, but it’ll take a while to clean the entire store.”

Ron took a deep breath. “Okay – here’s the plan. Joey – do we have a spare mop head? Yes? Good. You’re going to mop up. Use the extra mop head, and then we’ll trash it right afterwards. Duke is still here, right? He’s going to go right behind you and disinfect the floor and anywhere else we find traces of this guy. Hermione’s gonna finish up her closing duties for the pharmacy and I’m gonna take care of counting down registers and the deposit. Once I’m done in the office, I’ll help you all out here, and if we’re lucky, we’ll get out of here before midnight.”

Joey saluted and bolted for the stockroom.

Ron exhaled noisily and looked to Hermione. “Does this sort of thing _normally_ happen here?”

“This is the first time someone’s bled out,” she said, “Though we did have one rather unstable individual take refuge over in photo. The police had to collect him.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. This happened during my first trio meeting with Seto and Isono.”

“ _Unbelievable_ ,” he muttered, and went to collect the registers and take them back to the office. This was the first time he’s gone to help another store.

And after this? Definitely the last.


	8. Day 198: "Hey" [Part 1 of 2]

Paper ball #5 – otherwise known as “The Schedule”, sailed across the office to its final destination: the trashcan, only to bounce right off the rim and land on the floor next to its four previous iterations.

Seto barely gave it a side-eyed contemptuous glare before printing off a new blank template. Surely #6 would be the one. This wasn’t his first rodeo – he’s made schedules for years.

But this one? _This one_.

The newbie he had hired to replace Johnson flaked after their second week, and for the specific set of dates that he was currently working on Nesbitt happened to be on vacation. That left only Isono, Fuguta and himself to run the store. As a store manager, sure he held keys, but the role of store opener and closer fell to his leadership staff. He was technically an extra body.

Opening the store wasn’t that big an issue – usually he arrived well before the opening manager would anyway. And to be fair, he really didn’t have a problem closing either. But that was the perk of being a store manager – he didn’t _have_ to work evenings, and it was the time he cherished most, sitting at home tinkering with this project or that, in the brief moments of his day he got to relax before starting the daily grind all over again.

What he _did_ have to do, however, was rewrite the written schedule to now account for their missing member of management – _after_ it had already gone out. Both Fuguta and Isono brought up separate occasions where there were conflicts with adjusting the schedule, which meant he had to pick up a bit more extras on his own – while keeping the rest of everything fair between them.

And with Tea _also_ out of the store, helping to set up the cosmetics department at the new location opening across town, that also meant he was down a cashier, too. Lovely.

Not long after Isono’s second shift got scribbled down did the sheet of paper soar through the air to join its friends. Unlike the other five wads of paper, this one fell neatly into the trash can, just as someone knocked on the office door. When he chose to ignore it, whoever it was knocked again, harder this time.

Seto squinted through the foggy glass and caught a glimpse of wild hair. Both Atem and Yugi were in the store today, so it was a clear tossup over which one of them it was. He guessed Yugi and threw the door open.

It was Atem.

“ _Heyyy_ ,” he began, and Seto immediately scowled down at him. This wasn’t the friendly “hey!” used to enthusiastically greet a friend. It wasn’t the tired, melancholy “hey” that meant “everything is going by the wayside and life is a dumpster fire, but I’m here and it's fine, and I'm rolling with it”. And it wasn’t even the short, irritated “ _hey_ ,” that started off before a rant of a complaint about something – or someone.

This was the drawn out “hey” of _"I need you to do something for me”_.

“The answer is no,” Seto said flatly, and stepped aside so Atem could enter the office. “You can’t have whatever it is you want. Not if you all want to know what you’re going to be working next week.”

Atem rocked back and forth on his heels, a frown on his face, and…a screwdriver in his hand.

“I need your help,” he began, “The 5x7 printer keeps jamming.”

Seto sank back down into his chair and raised an eyebrow at him. Yugi and Atem were arguably the best photo techs he’s ever had. They knew the ins and outs on how to make the printers work and the means to find support if something went down.

Not to say that _he_ didn’t because he remembered his old days of running the photo labs before becoming a store manager. But the official help channels should be utilized. If they manage to find the answers to their own problems, they’re more likely to retain that knowledge in the future, rather than him have to show them every other week.

It wasn't that he didn’t _want_ to help them – his staff at this store overall were _loads_ better than the ones he’s led in the past. But he, as a store manager was a teacher and a mentor – not a crutch used to merely limp along without improvement.

He didn’t mind teaching, especially for Yugi and Atem because they picked up on things _quick_ , but he _hated_ having to repeat himself all the time. And having to pull a double shift and deal with Rex and Weevil last night took the last bit of patience he had for the week.

And it was only Tuesday.

“I already power cycled the printer, _and_ flossed the paper out that I could,” said Atem, before Seto could ask, because Atem knew he would, “but there’s paper seriously wedged inside and Yugi and I can’t get it out. It’s stuck for real this time.”

He paused. “We also have 12 orders for 5x7 prints…and one of them is for 200 photo cards.”

Seto wrinkled his nose. “ _No one_ knows that many people to need all of those.”

Atem shrugged. “Tis the season. But we really do need help getting the paper unstuck.”

“Did you call the support desk?”

Atem shook his head. “Yugi’s doing that as a last resort, because they’re just going to make him do all the things we’re doing now, all over again, before they relent to give us a new printer. But I thought – since you used to _lead_ the photo labs back in your cashiering heydays, that you might have a few sneaky tips and tricks that we new kids don’t know about.”

Seto sighed.

Atem held out the screwdriver. “Yugi and I have never taken the printer apart.”

“And you think _I_ have?”

Atem bowed dramatically from the door. “You are the ultimate engineering wizard, one who strikes fear deep into the gears of wonky machinery. Help us Photo Master Kaiba, you’re our only hope.”

Seto couldn’t help but smirk at him. “This is because you watched me dismantle the office printer last week, isn’t it?”

Atem straightened up, laughing. “Yup.”

Seto glanced at the clock on the bottom of his computer screen. 3:28pm. “I’ll fix your printer, but I still have two schedules to make. If I’m still here after 4:00, I’m _not here_. Got it?”

Atem nodded and gave one of Joey’s quirky salutes. “Yes, sir!”


	9. Day 198: Mutual Trolling [Part 2 of 2]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Heads up! This chapter is going up hours after Chapter 8. If you haven't yet read that one, please click back a chapter and start there! :D**

Pegasus pulled into the parking lot at exactly 3:45pm, fifteen minutes before his completely unscheduled visit would start. Catching his stores off guard happened to be one of his favorite parts of being a district manager. It wasn’t just to drive his managers crazy – the part of the point of his walks were to point out opportunities he saw in his visits.

When they know about it in advance, the red carpet gets rolled out. The store takes the extra effort to make sure not a hair is out of place, and he gets to see only the best of the best. After all, if he can’t find anything that needs work, his visit wouldn’t take nearly as long. And he knew, no matter which location he visited, that everyone would be counting down the seconds until he got back in his car and moved on to the next store.

Did he want to see aisles conditioned and priced properly, a clean sales floor and stockroom, and a log of all things running smoothly? Of course – but he enjoyed popping in unexpectedly so he could see how the store _really_ functions.

Naturally, the cashiers will be welcoming all the customers the day he’s _scheduled_ to show up, but would they for the other days of the week? Would they be offering surveys, keeping the front counters clean, and… _actually_ work on whatever happened to be assigned that day?

Such was not the case from one of the last stores he visited. The two cashiers that were on duty at the time were more focused on gossiping with each other and probably their hundreds of social media friends as they sat around at the photo kiosks and goofed off on their phones.

Sufficed to say, that was not a good conversation had with the store manager.

This time, however, he was visiting Seto Kaiba’s store, and he knew right off the bat that there wouldn’t be any need to have the cashiers or the pharmacy techs reprimanded. Kaiba kept a firm hand on how he liked things run, and his cashiers were always upbeat and friendly. It was always a pleasant experience with them, and he remembered talking to Joey Wheeler far longer than he had originally intended, just because the blond had such an easygoing attitude and told funny jokes.

So when he walked through the front doors and was _not_ immediately greeted, it took him by surprise, especially when there were three employees right there behind the front counter. He saw Yugi and Atem immediately, thanks to their tricolored hair. After all this time of visiting, he still couldn’t tell which was which unless he stared at their name badges – and he sometimes suspected Seto had them switch them when he had scheduled visits, just to confuse the hell out of him.

 _Seto_ , however, was also behind the counter, which made the lack of greeting even more strange, until he saw just what they were doing as he approached the photo corner of the store.

Seto was flanked by both Yugi and Atem and they all had their backs to the counter, huddled over one of the printers in the giant photo machine cabinet.

None of the three of them noticed him even walk up.

“Tweezers,” Seto said, and Atem handed them over with a fluid flick of his wrist. A screwdriver was handed back in return.

Pegasus stood off to the side, just past Yugi’s left, to have a glimpse of what they were doing. The entire front of the printer was off the machine. Screws and bits of who-knows-what were sitting along the top of the printer desk. Yugi held pliers in one hand and was shining a flashlight in with the other.

“Pliers,” Seto said, and Yugi swapped out for the tweezers instead.

Pegasus rested his hip against the counter and crossed his arms, enjoying the show. This was better than watching surgeons work. _Well, no_ , he thought to himself. This _was_ an operation, just of a different sort.

He smiled to himself. _Let’s see how long it takes for them to notice I’m here_.

A customer walked up to the regular checkout counter and unloaded an armful of random items. Atem set his guarded tools onto the photo cabinet and moved to help them immediately, and Pegasus listened in to the warm exchange between cashier and customer, tallying off on his mental checklist.

Customer greeted: check.  
Rewards card: check.  
Offer the receipt survey? Nope.

Atem turned to return to photo, saw Pegasus, and faltered in his step, eyes wide. He opened his mouth, most likely to sputter the delayed ‘Welcome to DMNO’ greeting that was never offered, but stopped once Pegasus lifted his finger to his lips, a sneaky smile on his face and nodded towards Seto.

Atem bit his lip and looked from him to Seto and back again.

Pegasus made a silent ‘ _shush’_ and winked at him.

“Shine the light higher,” Seto said, and Yugi shifted his arm up in time for Seto to pry a shred of paper from the innards of the machine. “How the hell did you get it stuck _there_?”

“I don’t know!” Yugi said, “I went to pull the roll out, like I always do when it jams, and it just…didn’t come out! I haven’t done anything weird to it, I swear!”

“A normal jam doesn’t require taking half of the machine apart,” said Seto.

“It jammed earlier though,” said Atem, “maybe we didn’t get all of the paper out that time and then made it worse.”

“Perhaps,” Seto muttered, and then swore under his breath. His last tug with the pliers just ripped the paper instead, leaving most of the chunk still dislodged in the printer. “ _Screwdriver_.”

Atem passed it to him and then watched nervously as he started tinkering with yet another piece of the printer. “Is – is that meant to come apart like that?”

“ _None of this_ is meant to come apart in a store. That’s why when you call the support center and tell them that the printer choked on the paper _this extravagantly_ , they send a new one. Whoever manages the spare parts depot will dissect it and put it back together. _Pliers_.”

Atem glanced back behind him. Pegasus merely waved. Atem eyes shifted to Seto again, but Pegasus shook his head. The stupid cheeky grin was still plastered all over his face.

“There,” Seto said, pulling another scrap of paper from the printer. “Do we have compressed air back here?”

Yugi shook his head.

“Pharmacy has one,” said Atem. “Mako was using it last night when he was here.”

“Go get it so you can flush out this entire section.”

Atem nodded and made a point to trod over the tip of Seto’s toes as he turned.

Seto glared at him. “That was my _foot_ , Atem.”

“Sorry!” Atem said, and while he still had Seto’s attention, shifted his eyes towards Pegasus, and took great satisfaction on the pout that formed on his face.

“ _Atem!”_ Pegasus put a hand over his heart, “And here I thought we were on the same wavelength!”

Seto spun around so quickly that he nearly took Yugi out with the pliers still clenched in his hand. A thousand inappropriate things to say to his boss jumped right to the forefront of his mind before he managed to tone down his thoughts to something that _wouldn’t_ get him written up.

“… _How long have you been standing there?”_

Pegasus pretended to look offended. “ _Well!_ Is that any way to greet your district manager?”

Seto turned his cold gaze to Atem. “How long have you known he was there?”

“A-a minute,” said Atem. Hopefully it wasn't truly longer than that.

Seto rolled his eyes and took a long, sharp inhale. Just what he needed. Pegasus on a surprise visit. “Go get the compressed air.”

Atem didn’t need telling twice. He could feel the temperature in the lab plummeting and it wasn’t because the heat in the store wasn’t kicking in properly.

Yugi took a step back as Seto harshly set the plier down on the photo register counter, still glaring at Pegasus.

“What brings you here today?” Seto asked through forced tones.

“I had some news to share,” said Pegasus mildly, ignoring the arctic chill aimed in his direction, “But instead I got to observe quite the surgical procedure!”

“Uh huh,” Seto said flatly, and he looked to Yugi. “Can you and Atem reassemble this?”

Yugi held his hands up. “On a normal situation, yes, but I lost track of all the pieces you took out of that thing.”

“ _Well_ ,” Seto said to Pegasus, “Your news will have to wait then because I have to reassemble a printer.”

“I hope it won’t be too long,” said Pegasus.

“If you were really on a time crunch you wouldn’t have waited around playing surprise games with my cashiers.” Seto reached into his pocket, pulled his ring of store keys and tossed it to him. “Make yourself at home in the office.”

“Oh, I know the code,” said Pegasus.

“I changed it.”

“Ah.” Pegasus held up the keyring. “Which is it?”

“It’s the silver one.” He turned to Yugi and held out his hand. “Screwdriver.”

Pegasus set off down the cooler aisle and into the locker room to stop right outside the office door. “Alright, silver key.” He looked down at the ring of no less than ten different keys.

They were all silver.

* * *

“Alright, I’m here, so what’s this big news you have for me,” Seto grumbled. It was past 4:00. He wanted to finish his two schedules and go home. Instead, he played Operation on a photo printer and now had to deal with Pegasus in person outside of the usually scheduled two days a month.

 _And_ Pegasus was in his chair.

Today just kept getting better and better.

“We’ll have to collect your pharmacist first,” said Pegasus, and hit the button on the phone to use the PA system. **_“Hermione to the office!”_**

“You could have asked for her while you were waiting,” said Seto. He twisted around to pull the spare chair from the corner.

Pegasus waggled a finger at him. “Now, that would be taking the surprise out of it!”

“You were the run who spoke over the phone. It’s no surprise anymore that you’re here.”

Pegasus froze mid wave and stopped short of whatever his response was going to be, just to lean back in his seat in defeat.

“Oh poo.”

He straightened up when he heard Hermione key in the office door code and welcomed her in. “Good afternoon, my dear! I hope all is going well in your little corner!”

“Hi,” she said uncertainly, and looked briefly at Seto. “I didn’t know you were going to be here today….”

“That takes the fun out of a surprise visit!” said Pegasus, “do you really wish I would lay my entire schedule out at your feet?”

“Yeah,” Seto deadpanned. “I’d like to know when not to be here.”

“Such a kidder you are,” said Pegasus, and spun in his seat to open his laptop.

Seto glanced at Hermione and she smiled apologetically at him.

“So what brings you here?” Hermione asked, drawing Pegasus’s attention on her. Anything to give Seto the extra two seconds to clear the blatant scowl off of his face. She wasn’t exactly sure what kind of boss/subordinate relationship the two of them had, but Seto never vocally hid his displeasure whenever Pegasus was here. There was no possible way that Pegasus didn’t see or hear it, but for whatever reason he either never brought it up in anyone else’s company, or he chose to ignore it.

She could never have spoken or showed this sort of attitude to Minerva McGonagall, so there must have been some sort of past history between them.

Asking Seto about it never seemed like a smart plan, and it really was none of her business, so it just was something she chose to accept as a thing, and left it at that.

“I have marvelous news!” Pegasus pulled up a chart of numbers and turned the screen towards them. “Now, Hermione, you’ve been here for about six months or so, and I’ve been watching the progress you and Seto have made towards the challenges we outlined when you first arrived. Look at these upward-trending figures! This is marvelous!”

She grimaced slightly. “Except for that bit there, about two months in…everything took a nose dive.”

Seto shook his head. “That was roughly the time we had the store meeting and laid down the law for the technicians. Since then it’s improved.”

“That’s right,” said Pegasus, “Whatever you’ve decided to do, and continued to do, is working!”

“It hardly feels like much,” said Hermione, “We’re following Workflow.”

“Aha!” said Pegasus, “But you remember that no one was following it when you first arrived! Your first few weeks nothing really changed all that much. This was an adjustment period. You are getting the feel of a new location, new staff, and how things have more or less been run without proper leadership.”

He paused and looked right at Seto, whose face clearly said, “Excuse me?”.

“Not that you haven’t done what you could, my dear Seto, but I think we all recognize that the both of you got dropped into quite a pickle of a store.”

“That’s certainly _one_ way to put it,” said Seto.

Pegasus closed the laptop and swiveled to face them both head on. “I didn’t _really_ have to stop in today, but I was in the area after visiting the new store. It’s coming along quite nicely. But I really wanted to share the good news. Even the regional director has noticed the steep shift up that all your metrics are currently taking. A little dip here and there is expected, but your percentages in the last two to three months are higher overall than the rest of the district. And for that, I want to reward you, because I know the journey has been trying for not only the both of you – but your staff!”

“Reward us…how?” Hermione asked, “We were really just doing what we were supposed to….”

“Even so – I think it’s safe to say we’ve taken a dark segment in this store’s past and put it behind us.” Pegasus slipped the laptop back into his bag. “Find out what your team likes to eat. I’ll be calling in Thursday morning. Lunch will be catered for everyone this Friday.”

“That’s a loaded question – half the pharmacy is going to say sushi,” said Seto.

Pegasus winced. “Okay, maybe a _little_ more budget-conscious than that. This is coming out of my own pocket, after all.”

He got up and happily clapped his hands together. “Well – I must be off. Please keep up the excellent work, and I will be in touch! Until next time! – Oh, and Seto, try not to dissect any more devices. You’re going to put our support services out of a job.”

And with a wink, he was gone.


	10. Day 216: The Audit

“One last thing – apparently we’re being audited by the Board of Pharmacy,” Hermione said, pulling a letter from her folder during her trio meeting with Seto and Isono. “It has to be completed and faxed in by the end of the month, so we have…about two weeks to get it finished and sent.”

“Is it the typical one?” Seto asked, “Where they want to make sure everyone’s license is in the system, no one has overdue pharmacy learning modules, that we’re taking care of hazardous waste properly and whatever else?”

“Sort of,” she said skimming through the paper, “There’s all the routine questions like that, but there’s this other paper too. We have to supply copies of specific prescriptions.”

“That doesn’t seem like much of an issue. Your scripts are filed in the white cabinet beside the Drive Thru, aren’t they?” asked Isono.

“The recent ones are,” said Hermione, “But as the cabinet runs out of room, they get boxed up by classification and are stored for ten years. So somewhere in the stockroom are the older records. I need to find several…CIIs that date back….”

She grimaced. “Three years ago.”

“That was before any of us arrived here,” said Isono.

“I know,” said Hermione, “But the store has been around for longer than that so I imagine all of the records are together. We just have to find the ones we need. All of the individual files are labeled with the RX numbers so it’s not as tedious as a task as you think it is. I’ll just need help digging them up.”

“We can do that on a night the two of us close,” said Seto, and he forced himself not to shudder against the cold air pumping through the vents, despite the heat being on. “We’re not going to have the time while the store is open.”

“That’s fine,” she said.

“Are you able to complete the rest of the audit yourself?” asked Seto. “I imagine Filius took care of this in your old store.”

“I should be able to,” Hermione said, skimming through the longer, first page of questions. “This is all fairly straightforward, though I’m sure I’ll ask if there’s something I can’t find.” She got up, but then paused after only moving half a step away from her seat. “There…wasn’t more to the meeting, was there?”

Seto shook his head. “I don’t have anything. I just need to go over some front-end expectations with Isono for this weekend, since I took off Friday and Monday.”

“Oh!” she smiled warmly at him, and suddenly the cold office didn’t feel so bad. “A long weekend. Are you going anywhere?”

“Visiting my brother at his school,” said Seto, “So I will be mostly unreachable. Isono will be in the store all of those days to handle any fires that need put out.”

* * *

Seto arrived to the store at an ungodly late _7:30am_ Tuesday morning, surprised to find both Isono and Hermione’s cars already in the parking lot.

Normally he was the only one that arrived to work this early. Hermione sometimes asked to know who was opening to get ahead on some of the small tasks before store opening, but because of their tight budget, there wasn’t enough leeway to let the openers come in extra early and still have coverage through the afternoon when the closers come in.

Not that Pegasus had anything to do with their payroll budget cut, but Seto always felt better blaming him for it.

Isono had already taken care of most of the opening day paperwork when he strolled into the office, a fresh large coffee in hand that he picked up from the café by his home on route.

“You’re here early,” Seto said. “I hope we’re not throwing band-aids on any crises from the weekend.”

Isono chuckled. “No, nothing like that, and welcome back, by the way. Hermione wanted to come in early to work on that audit for the Board of Pharmacy.”

“Ah.”

“She was wondering if you wouldn’t mind staying around until she's supposed to leave for the day, and take care of whatever you two needed to find up in the RX records once the closing pharmacist takes over.”

“I thought we were doing that one night this week.”

“Yes, but the two of you don’t close together at all this week and it’s coming due,” said Isono. “Kemo is here the day you work late.”

Seto frowned into his coffee. “ _Great_.”

Well, if there was nothing for him to prepare ahead of time, thanks to Isono coming in early, then he might as well check in and get a feel for the kind of day the pharmacy was going to have. He paused long enough in the doorway to make sure Isono would check the communications portal and make the daily to-do list before he left to cross the store to the pharmacy.

The work queue was delightfully empty, with only a few straggling prescriptions to complete, ones that had come through after hours while the store was closed. Judging by those numbers alone, it seemed the store survived well without him for four days.

What a strange but welcome twist.

Hermione was up on the mid-size stepladder when he walked through the doors, a clipboard in one hand as she squinted up at the pharmacy licenses mounted up on the wall. A cabinet stood right in the way practically under them, so she had the ladder as close as possible, and was leaning horrendously to one side to read the names and expiration dates on the papers on the far opposite side.

“Morning!” she said, twisting around with a hand braced on the cabinet to face him. “How was your weekend?”

“It was fine,” Seto said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m verifying everyone’s licenses,” she said. “Whoever built this store and decided to put the plaque mounts most of the way up the wall didn’t account for anyone having to…you know…take certificates in and out of the thing.”

Hermione smiled slyly at him. “You know. Because not all of us are tall.”

“You could have asked Isono to help you.”

She gave him a strange look and twisted back to face the wall. “I can handle it.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. She was standing on the top step, the one all the warning signs plastered all over the sides of the ladder warned _not_ to use.

“You’re going to fall off.”

“I am not,” she said defiantly, as he moved to stand next to her, “And I know you’re our ‘Resident Tall Person’, but we can’t always rely on you to get things that are high up for us. That’s why ladders were invented.”

“Ladders with warnings,” said Seto. She was standing high enough that his head hit at her ankles. It was a good thing he didn’t have a safety audit walk to do until next month. This entire stunt would fail them outright.

_Are all ladders in good working condition and utilized properly –_ a hard _no_ right off the bat.

Thanks, Hermione.

Hermione gave him a sly side-eye smile. “Are you saying I don’t have good balance?”

Seto crossed his arms and stared up at her. “You’re the one standing at the tip-top of the ladder with half of your body leaned off of it.”

“Well,” Hermione said flatly, and checked off a box on her clipboard. “It’s not like this cabinet is in the way or anything. _Oh –_ this is interesting.”

“What?”

“There are two licenses here – for a Leichter…and a Gansley…but they don’t work here.” She glanced down at Seto. “Wasn’t Leichter the old ASM?”

“I think so.”

“Why didn’t they take their licenses with them?”

“Honestly,” Seto began, “it probably doesn’t matter. I think whatever everyone was caught up in got their licenses all revoked anyway.”

“Hm, well I’ll have to look them up. They don’t work here anymore regardless, and they’re taking up space where someone else can put their paperwork. I know we’re still waiting for Ryou’s replacement after they butchered his name twice in a row.”

With one hand on the wall she leaned over and fiddled with the latch holding all of the licenses in place, but it wouldn’t open. “Oh… _come on…_.”

When she reached for the latch a second time, Seto caught the leg of the ladder sway a hair, and he shot out an arm to brace it back on the ground. “Okay, that’s enough, come down before you fall and kill yourself.”

She shot him an exasperated look.

“You can’t reach it.”

“I _can_ ,” she said stubbornly. “I had it before.”

“And you missed. Let me get up there.”

“Just – wait a moment,” she sighed, and grabbed for the latch again. Her fingers dug into the grooves. “I’ve…I’ve just about got –”

The ladder gave an unsteady jerky lurch in the opposite direction just as she yanked hard on the handle; there was nothing to grab onto to steady her balance and with a sharp gasp that sucked all the air from her lungs, she toppled off…

…and right into Seto’s arms. She felt his knees buckle, suddenly taking on her weight before he straightened up, his hold tight enough that the part of her pressed against his chest could feel his heart hammering within his ribcage. Or maybe that was her heart beating that fast. She couldn’t tell, and she was too stunned to realize that she was, in fact, still breathing.

And in that one moment, time could have stopped.

Hermione glanced up at him, eyes wide, and couldn’t help that he was staring down at her with the same shock level plastered all over his face. She didn’t expect to fall off, and it seemed he truly didn't either, but hot damn did he have fast reflexes! Her arm snaked around the back of his neck and reached for his shoulder as the arm under her knees trembled before he shifted his weight and tightened up.

She felt her cheeks grow hot staring into his eyes, worry bleeding out of vibrant blue irises, and the dull blush forming on his otherwise pale face. He still hadn’t moved to let her down.

“I-I,” she stuttered out, but made it no farther than that. Her brain didn’t seem capable of forming complete thoughts. She felt the spark again, the same one from the first day they met, only warmer and brighter than before, deep down in her chest.

Their faces were inches apart, and she couldn’t help but wonder if his intense and unwavering gaze was as lost in her eyes as her own were in his. They were far too close. And he didn’t seem capable of forming thought either.

“I-I,” she started again after a few seconds, her heartbeat finally slowing down a little now that the frightful surprise of the fall had passed, “Um…thank you…”

She could still feel his heart viciously pounding in his chest.

“ _Would you two like to be alone?”_

Hermione squeaked as the arm under her legs suddenly dropped away, setting her down only somewhat gracefully on shaky legs until she found her balance again. The grip she had against his shoulder fell away as he suddenly backed off and glared out towards the consultation window.

Mai was leaning on the counter, a wide grin on her face as she sipped whatever massive fruity concoction she picked up from the nearby smoothie shop.

Hermione quickly turned away from her, trying to rid the furious blush from her face, and honestly wished she came with the sort of emotional on/off switch that Seto seemed to possess as he continued to murder-stare down Mai.

Finally, Seto shifted his gaze up to the license case and started up the ladder, opened the case without even having to struggle _or_ get on the top step, and removed the two old certificates. “ _Someone_ learned first-hand why safety warnings exist.”

“ _Uh huh…,”_ Mai said, in clear disbelief. 

The instant Seto was back on the ground, he handed the old licenses to Hermione, the ghost of a smile on his face that only she could see. “Let’s _not_ fail the safety audit next month.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CII** -classified drugs are those with high potential to be abused, and therefore require a lot more handling and verification than a regular maintenance medication.


	11. Day 240: Snowstorm [Part 1 of 2]

It was eerily calm when Seto arrived for work Friday morning. The promise of snow loomed on the horizon, teased by the light flutter of flakes that snuck out before the rest – the calm before the storm.

Hermione made it just as the first true snowflakes – not thin little flurries but giant clumpy drops – started falling.

As per usual on the days they opened together, she met him in the breakroom for her first caffeine run of the day. Alongside the boxes of his personal coffee stash sat a smaller number of her herbal teas, and a new fourth mug – a gift from Seto over Christmastime – hung on the drying rack, just as sarcastic as the three he rotated around.

Today, however, she brought her _Carpe Librum_ tumbler, after stopping at her favorite café on the way into work. Like clockwork, Seto was up against the counter, coffee in one hand, his phone in the other. Today’s mug of choice was his personal favorite:

I AM A MANAGER  
TO SAVE TIME LET’S ASSUME THAT I’M NEVER WRONG

“Morning,” she said brightly. “How long do you think it’ll be before everyone for the evening starts calling off?”

Seto snorted and turned his phone around so she could see what he was staring at. A long text chain back and forth with Nesbitt.

“He’s already called in and it’s not even snowing yet.”

“It is, actually,” said Hermione, “It was starting when I got here. You can’t fault him for being cautious – we’re supposed to get quite a lot, and from all of his callouts last week, his car wouldn’t make it here.”

Seto took a long and slow sip of his coffee, a far contrast from the first time she met him where he took his burning caffeine down like a shot of hard liquor. “Snow or not, he needs to be able to have reliable transportation to get to work. Today? I expected him to call in – just not five minutes after I got here.”

“Well…with the amount we’re slated to receive, I don’t think anyone for this evening is going to make it.”

She followed him out of the breakroom. The shades on the tall front windows were already up, and she could only see a frenzy of white through the glass.

“Today’s going to be a long day isn’t it?”

“It’s going to be a _slow_ day,” said Seto.

* * *

Duke arrived five minutes before the store opened, followed closely by Yugi, shivering to the bone from his six-block walk to work.

The moment he got the front tills in the register, he wandered back to the pharmacy consultation window, rubbing his hands together. “H-hey, Hermione? Is it alright if I make one of your things of tea?”

“Of course – are you alright?”

Yugi nodded. “J-just cold. I walked in.”

Duke stopped. “Wait, why did you _walk_?”

Yugi blinked. “I…always walk?”

Hermione’s jaw dropped. “Yugi, it’s blizzarding outside!”

“Well, it’s not blizzarding _yet_ ,” said Yugi, “But I only live six blocks from here.”

“Dude – you’re gonna freeze to death later. I’m taking you home when I get off work.” Duke pointed at him with a leaflet. “No arguments.”

“Really, it’s okay,” said Yugi, “I have snow boots and everything, I’ll be fine.”

“ _What did I just say about no arguments_?”

Yugi held up his hands defensively. “Okay, okay!”

He disappeared into the breakroom, and returned a few minutes later holding up a mug that read:

EAT  
SLEEP  
REFAX RX’S  
SLAM PHONES  
REPEAT

“Is this okay to use?”

Hermione nodded. “Yeah, go ahead.” She lifted her travel mug. “I’m good with this one today.”

“Thanks!”

**10:00am**

Seto walked up front, scribbling on a clipboard, and nearly tripped over the “CAUTION: WET FLOOR” sign in his path.

“Careful!” Yugi said. He was leaning forward along the front counter with his phone in hand. “Those are to protect our customers coming in! _You_ aren’t supposed to walk into them.”

Seto looked up along the stretch of open floorspace before the counters. No less than three wet floor signs were strategically placed in clear eyesight of the front doors. He sidestepped the one directly in front of him and glanced out the windows near the front door. The road was swallowed by a sea of white. So was the parking lot.

“I didn’t realize I was paying you to prop up the front counter and play on your phone.”

Yugi gestured around him. “There’s no one here.”

“That means there’s plenty of things you _can_ be doing without interruption.”

“Okay,” said Yugi. He pocketed his phone and righted himself. “My morning tasks are done. Photo is caught up – _and_ I did my supply order for the lab. The outdate checklist for the month is complete and I already pulled the grocery stockroom carts and worked out any backstock I could. So whatcha got on your fancy clipboard for me?”

Seto inhaled sharply, spun on his heel, and disappeared up the hair care aisle. “…I’ll be back.”

Yugi grinned. There wasn’t anything for him to do – at least not in the front of the store where he’d have to be in easy sight of the front registers. Two hours into the day and not one customer had walked in.

He doubted anyone would show.

**11:30am**

“Let me guess,” Duke said, as Hermione got off the phone. He knew exactly who called from the caller ID. “Our order isn’t coming today.”

“Nope,” she sighed. “The truck broke down on the highway. If we’re lucky, we’ll get it Monday along with Monday’s order.”

“Double the truck on a Monday,” Duke groaned. “My favorite.”

The drive thru sensor went off, and they both glanced up at the camera watching the lane in time to see a car skid and swerve right past the window.

“I suppose we’ll be getting a customer after all today,” said Duke. "If the guy can even stop the car."

Hermione stared up at the now-empty drive thru lane. “I’m surprised a car even made it _up the ramp_!”

**1:45pm**

Seto walked back into the pharmacy. “Have you had _any_ customers today?”

“One,” said Duke. “It took them three tries to actually stop _at_ the window, and then they almost took out the mirror trying to get out.”

“On the plus side, we’ve finished all of our calls,” said Hermione. “The peace and quiet is nice today. What about up front?”

“Yugi’s had one customer that, like on any other given day, makes me question my faith in the human race.”

Duke just stared at him.

“Someone came in to buy cigarettes for his wife because she was too unwilling to get them herself. This guy drove through at least five inches of snow, _intoxicated_ , just so she has an extra shot at lung disease.”

“There’s five inches on the road!?” Duke squinted out the drive thru window. “How the heck did he get here?”

“There’s probably three inches of sludge in the road,” said Seto, “But the last time the plow came through our lot was a good two hours ago, and it’s more or less back to what it was.”

“SETO!” they heard Yugi call from the front of the store. “PHONE!”

Seto pivoted to face the front of the store, but he couldn’t see Yugi at all. “PAGE NEXT TIME.”

“THERE’S NO ONE HERE!!”

Hermione, trying very hard not to laugh, picked up the phone at her station and held it out to him. “Line 1, probably?”

He took it from her, rolling his eyes, and waited for her to dial into the hold line. “This is Seto…yeah…uh huh…well you’re not the first one to call off today. …No, everyone on the evening staff called out... Yeah, pharmacy too. ...Don’t worry about it.”

“So who was that?” asked Duke.

“Ryou,” said Seto. “His calling off is no surprise at this point.”

**3:00**

“You think Pegasus would let us close down?” asked Yugi. He had upgraded from leaning on the counter to having what Seto could only describe as a craft project explosion all over it.

“I already tried that. Was shot down,” said Seto. He wrinkled his nose at the counter. “What are you doing?”

Yugi smiled. “I’m taking this opportunity to make new samples of our photo gifts. We never have a good time normally to do it, but the holidays are over now and the old ones need swapped out.”

“So why does it look like you haven’t finished anything?”

Yugi laughed. “Don’t be like that! I have a photobook here – that’s waiting for the heating unit to warm up. And then my wood panels here, also waiting for the heating unit. And _here_ is the first of my two canvases.”

He looked up at his boss, eyes bright. “Want to help?”

“You’re really going to saddle me with this for the rest of the day, aren’t you?”

Yugi’s jaw dropped, scandalized. “What!? No! I’m going to finish these before I leave!” He turned to check the timestamp on the bottom of the nearest register, and then peered outside. It was snowing harder now.

“Oh…” He said, his voice a little quieter. “Duke’s leaving isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Seto said flatly.

Yugi’s shoulder’s slumped even further and he looked out at all of his projects. “Oh. I can’t…I’m sorry.”

Seto pointed towards the locker room. “Go clock out and head home. It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Seto nodded. “Please, _I_ need something to do now.”

Yugi didn’t look certain. “Is…is it just going to be you and Hermione until closing? Everyone else called out, didn’t they?”

“They did.”

“But you and Hermione don’t live in town,” said Yugi. “It’s going to keep snowing all night and into tomorrow!”

“We’ll check into the hotel a few blocks from here if we need to,” said Seto. “The company will reimburse if we have to book two rooms for the night.”

“Well…you’ll be careful, won’t you?”

Seto waved him towards the time clock, and to Yugi’s immense relief, he didn’t seem irritated in the slightest. “Go, out of here before your grandfather has a heart attack.” He looked down at the phone in Yugi’s hand. “That _was_ who you were texting for half the day, wasn’t it?”

“Y-yeah,” said Yugi. “Grandpa’s been pretty worried. He closed his shop a few hours ago.”

“Smart, if his foot traffic has been as busy as ours.”

Yugi turned to go back and collect his things and Seto looked out among the mess. Two canvases, a photo book, a wood panels….and…what looked like a calendar. Oh - _and_ a puzzle and a floating frame. Everything looked printed out, yet nothing was assembled.

Fun.

Duke dropped his bag on the front counter. “Boss, we’re gonna borrow the shovels. I’m pretty sure my ride will get us out of the lot…I just gotta find the car.” He turned to Yugi and handed him his snow broom. “You clean, I’ll clear the path.”

Yugi nodded. “You got it.”

He started to follow Duke outside and then stopped and turned back to his manager. “You sure you and Hermione will be okay in here? I live just a few blocks away, I _can_ stay….”

“No, go,” Seto said. “We’re really not busy enough in here.”

“But what about all the ‘End of Day’ and closing down the registers? You can’t do that and watch the front counter at the same time.”

“Hermione can come out and watch it if I need her to, but honestly I’m just waiting on word from Pegasus that we can close down.”

Yugi clutched the snow broom tightly to his chest. “You said he shot down that plan.”

Seto let out a sharp exhale and gestured wildly to the windows. “That was at least five inches ago.”

**5:30**

The phone in the photo lab rang, and Seto stopped and set the feather duster down from his deep-clean of the printer cabinet. An internal call from Hermione’s pharmacist station. He hit the button to accept the call on speaker and went back to cleaning out the 4x8 printer’s cubby.

“Yes?”

 _“Have you had_ any _customers since Duke and Yugi left the store?”_

“No. Have you?”

“ _No…honestly I don’t think anyone is capable of making up the drive-thru ramp and around the corner. Has anyone been in to plow?”_

“Not since before the others even left,” Seto said with a sigh. “I called in another ticket, but at this rate everyone is asking for plows and service treatment so who knows how long it’s going to be for someone to come out here.”

_“That’s…that’s not very reassuring for us to get out of here tonight.”_

Seto scowled into the back of the cabinet. “Tell me about it. I’ve already sent another message to Pegasus about closing us down, and he hasn’t gotten back yet.”

“ _Can’t you make that executive decision as store manager? I know Pegasus is coming from ‘the bottom line’ perspective on things, but this is about our safety.”_

“Believe me,” Seto said flatly, “I’ve tried. But the thing about Pegasus is that he doesn’t live remotely close to here. I’ve been to his neighborhood before, and I know for a fact that they’re just getting rain. He probably thinks we can just roll over and suck it up.”

Hermione stayed quiet.

“In any case,” said Seto, “If we don’t have a single customer come through in the next 30 minutes, I’m closing us down. I don’t care that we have some duty as a pharmacy to remain open for the…tens of _no ones_ that are coming in to pick up medication. It’s not like anyone can get into the parking lot anyways.”

 _“Alright_ ,” she said hesitantly, “ _And what are we supposed to do if we can’t get_ out _of the lot?”_

“…Oh, we’ll get out of the lot.”

**6:30pm**

Hermione stood near the front door, her snowbrush held tight in her hand. There had to be at least about a foot – perhaps more already on the ground. Her small, reliable little car was okay for a few inches, but not _this_ much. She could barely even see it, buried halfway across the lot, mercifully next to Seto’s car.

They’d be slogging through the frozen tundra just trying to get to them.

 _'We'll get out of the lot', he said,_ she thought to herself. _Famous last words._

Seto was slipping into his coat as he rounded the corner of the aisle, and he stopped short near the front window, a fierce scowl on his face.

“I don’t believe this. I _called_ them,” he said. “They spoke to the driver themselves. Someone was supposed to have been through here by now.”

Hermione glanced back out the front doors. The lot looked just as untouched now as it did hours ago. Even from working in her corner of the pharmacy, she could tell no plow had made the journey through the drive-thru lane. It was completely undriveable.

Much like the roads. Aside from having however many inches packed down from the drivers foolish enough to be out and about, and the plows failing to keep up with the snowfall, they didn’t look any safer than if she decided to do spins in the parking lot.

“They’re probably held up,” she said, “You can’t blame them.”

“No,” said Seto, “I blame _Pegasus_ for making us sit here and babysit the building.”

Hermione bit her lip. “If we can’t get out…what do we do?”

Seto beckoned her back inside and locked all of the front doors, double-checking each one to make sure they didn’t budge. “We’re going to have to shelter in place until they plow us out.”

Her jaw dropped. “A-are we allowed to do that?”

Seto shrugged. “We don’t have a choice, unless you want to _walk_ to the hotel.”

Hermione wrinkled her nose; she didn’t even want to cross the parking lot. There was no way that she was going to venture down the street and potentially get hit by a vehicle spinning out and sliding off the road.

“…Didn’t think so,” Seto said and stashed the store keys back into his coat. “Alright, let’s hunker down.”


	12. Day 240: Snowstorm [Part 2 of 2]

**Supply Run**

Hermione locked the drive-thru drawer and left the pharmacy. Seto had retrieved a shopping cart and was slowly moving up the aisles, acting like the worst sort of casual shopper: the one that comes in five minutes before closing and has to look and touch absolutely everything in every aisle before moseying up to checkout.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“We’re going to be stuck here, probably until at least the snow stops,” said Seto, “Which, _lucky us,_ is sometime tomorrow at the absolute earliest. This is a pharmacy, not a hotel, so we’re going to have to get creative on how to make this work.”

Hermione nodded thoughtfully. “Alright – so what’s first on the agenda?” It couldn’t be food. They had a grocery section and a cooler and freezer along the far wall. Not the greatest selections to choose from, but they at least wouldn’t starve.

“A place to sleep, for one thing.”

Seto turned down the household aisle and stopped beside their tiny selection of closet items. Travel neck pillows sat on the middle shelf, underneath the pegs of hangers and laundry bags. Not regular pillows, but they were better than nothing, and two of them were tossed into the cart. The shelf below had some thick throw blankets, and he checked them over to see how large they were before pushing them all into the cart.

The answer? Not big. If Hermione scrunched up under one, she’d be alright, but they wouldn’t do him much good. Though, like the pillows, it was better than not having anything at all, so he kept it.

“Oh!” Hermione knelt down next to him and tugged out a rather large box from the bottom shelf. It was a queen-size air mattress.

“That’ll work,” said Seto.

Hermione dropped it into the cart and stared at it for an extra second. “…How are we going to inflate it?”

Seto didn’t seem fazed. “I have an air pump in my trunk.”

“O-kay,” she said slowly, “And how are you going to get to it?”

Seto raised an eyebrow and blinked at her, as if the answer was so obvious he wasn’t sure it needed a verbal explanation. “The snow hasn’t barricaded us inside.” And then while he was out there, he’d pick up his overnight bag that he also kept in his car for emergencies such as this one.

“Well…alright,” she shrugged, and reached back into the shelf for a second air mattress, but her hands came up empty. “Oh no, there’s only one!”

He didn’t skip a beat. “No big deal. We only need one.”

“ _W-what_?”

Hermione was never so thankful that she was turned away from him, because she felt her cheeks redden almost instantly. He said they were going to have to get creative, but surely that didn’t mean sharing it! Not that she wanted to make things difficult in an already troubling situation, but it just sounded like a terrible idea.

So many times already she felt her heart excitedly skip beats when around him, and after falling off the ladder last month, she suspected that he did too, for her. But he had always been incredibly professional with her and nothing more, and out of respect for both of their positions, she never tried to do anything for her feelings to affect their workplace relationship. In the end, she swallowed down her emotions as nothing more than an innocent crush and continued onwards.

If he also harbored feelings for her, sharing such close proximity could put both of their jobs at risk. It didn’t matter if it were just the two of them in the store. Unless they completely ignored each other until rescue arrived, any attachment they had for each other was just likely to grow, and eventually it would affect the store after it reopened.

“Only one of us has to sleep on it,” Seto clarified, “It’s for you.”

 _Oh, thank goodness_. “What are you going to sleep on then?”

“There's the bench in the RX waiting area,” Seto said mildly. “I’ll be fine there.”

“That hardly sounds comfortable.”

“Honestly, neither does the air mattress, but this isn’t a hotel and we’ll make it work.” He grabbed a multipack of small towels and tossed them into the cart before continuing on down the store aisles.

Hermione caught her reflection in the tinted glass of the stockroom door’s window, and mercifully her face wasn’t red anymore. “Okay, so sleeping arrangements are down, now what?”

“Do you have an overnight bag in your car?”

“Yes, but it’s not going to do me any good out there.”

“Well, I already have to go out and get the air pump for the mattress.”

Fair point.

“We’ll figure out what personal care we need after we get the bags from outside,” said Seto, and he pushed the cart right up to the front counter. “I’ll need you to ring me out.”

Her jaw dropped. “You’re buying all of it? We can’t just…I don’t know, expense it because of us being stuck here?”

“I can already hear the field day Pegasus would have if I did, and I’m likely to get myself fired if I talk back to him. Buying this stuff doesn’t bother me. Odds are most of it will go home with either of us in the end, so it would have to be paid for.”

“At least let me give you something towards it all,” Hermione insisted, but Seto shook his head and waved her on.

“No, I’ve got it.”

“Ugh, fine,” she said, “But let me buy our food. That way it’s a fair trade.”

* * *

Hermione lingered back by the front doors and watched as Seto used one of the store’s extending snow brooms to shove at least a good foot’s worth of accumulation off the back of his car. Despite her continuous offering, he refused to let her help him, citing that someone had to stay behind inside the store.

She didn’t see why – they already informed both Pegasus and the Security Ops department that they were both closing early and sheltering in place until the storm let up. And it wasn’t as if any customers were going to be making it inside. There was no reason why he had to make the supply run alone.

Finally, at least twenty minutes later, he returned to the front doors and dropped both a small duffel bag and the air pump in the store’s vestibule.

“How is it out there?” she asked.

“There’s ice buried under all of the snow,” he said, stomping the excess off of his shoes, and Hermione cringed a little. Neither of them had proper boots here, and the store didn’t sell any, so he was stomping through snow hitting above his ankles. The bottoms of his trousers were soaked, and she didn’t even want to think about how wet and cold his feet must be.

He held out a hand for her car keys.

She hesitantly handed them over. “You’re soaked and probably freezing – there’s no need for you to go back out. I can get my own bag.”

“No, I got it,” he said, tucking ends of his scarf back under his coat. One deep breath later, and back out he went, using the same manmade tracks through the snow to get back to her car.

With a huff, she crossed her arms across her chest and leaned against the front windows. He must have started clearing off her car before, because it didn’t take him nearly as long to get her bag out of the trunk.

She straightened up suddenly, as Seto’s leg buckled out from under him the moment he put his foot down, and he disappeared into the white abyss somewhere in the middle of the parking lot.

Hermione quickly pushed open the front door and hurried out into the lot, very aware as she wandered through Seto’s initial tracks that her coat, scarf and gloves were back in the employee locker room. Her white pharmacist jacket was the only thing protecting her sweater from the wet, chonky flakes.

Her foot slipped and she threw her arms out to balance herself before taking another step forward. Seto was in the center of his manmade snow crater, starting to prop himself up on his elbows when she dropped down next to him. It must have been the decline in the pavement where he went skidding, she mused. Just off to his right was the giant storm drain grate, but the dip in the ground wasn't visible from the top of the snowline. 

“Are you alright?”

“ _Peachy_.”

“Here, let me help you get up,” she said, and offered her arm.

“This is going to end badly,” he said, squinting against the fat flake trying to sneak into his eye.

She grabbed hold of his arm and pulled, only for her shoes to lose the little traction they had and she tumbled down and landed on him with an _oomph_! that knocked the wind out of them both.

* * *

**Back to Square One…**

Hermione was despaired to find that her overnight bag wasn’t as complete as she thought it was. Only two sets of clothes to work in, and nothing else. Still shivering to the bone, she followed Seto into the stockroom, where he managed to dig up a case of thermal pajama sets that never made it out to the sales floor during the holidays.

She initiated Purchase #2 in their new, makeshift hotel, consisting of thermals to both change into, an extra set to sleep in, super-soft and warm slipper shoes, and a number of personal care items.

Seto, go figure, didn’t need anything except for a pair of slippers, because he wasn’t about to sleep in his shoes, and he sure as hell wasn’t walking around the store barefoot or in his socks. _Especially_ not in the bathrooms, even if he mopped every crevice of the floors himself.

Finally warm again and changed into dry clothes, Hermione started the ball rolling on their next problem. Purchase #3 needed another shopping cart.

“So, assuming we don’t get rescued until after the snow stops…so probably Sunday morning…” Hermione began, “We need food for tonight and all of tomorrow. And maybe first thing Sunday.”

Seto groaned. “And we only have a microwave. I suppose we should count blessings that the grocery truck arrived yesterday.”

Hermione paused at the bread rack. The store carried only one brand and it wasn’t a decent one. “Is there… _anything_ kept in the breakroom? Like a small pantry stash?”

Seto snorted. “Are you kidding – the way these cashiers eat?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Hermione shrugged. “I rarely eat anything in the breakroom.” She grabbed the bag of bagels and a block of cream cheese from the cooler. Doing a weekend’s worth of grocery shopping at work was the last way she expected to spend her Friday night.

Thirty minutes and an ungodly amount of money spent later, the breakroom resembled something more like a kitchen.

Seto turned on the single brewer again, dug out the oversized frozen lasagna out of the freezer and tossed it into the microwave. With any luck, the cheap underpowered appliance would cook it right the first time, but he wasn't going to hold his breath over it.

The one time he bought something frozen that only required about a minute’s cook time, it ended up spending three minutes in the microwave.

This lasagna took fifteen minutes. If they were lucky, they’d eat before bed.

Hermione wandered into the breakroom, her slippers noisily scuffing against the floor as she walked, and set her travel mug onto the table beside the pack of plates she bought. Her shoulder was hitched up, balancing the phone wedged between it and her ear.

“…Yes, in the cubbies above his water bowl…no give him the blue can, he hasn’t had that one yet this week…”

She laughed. “No, he’s really not picky, so long as it’s the wet stuff. He rarely eats the crunchies…..mhm, yes ¼ of the can, and then replace the water…no you don’t have to, I changed it before work, but if you would be able to pop in on him in the morning and empty it then when he gets breakfast, that would be wonderful! …Oh, of course! Thanks – bye.”

She pocketed her phone in the cardigan she found in her overnight bag and sank down in one of the two chairs at the small lunchroom table. “Whatever you started smells good.”

“It’s the frozen lasagna,” he said, and popped one of his single coffees into the brewer. “Maybe – just maybe – it’ll be enough for the both of us. And if not….” He gestured to the single microwaveable cups of soup that were stacked on the counter. “There’s those.”

Hermione had purchased enough cups of soup and pasta to last well past the weekend. On top of that, and the snacks, _and_ all the frozen food she picked up, he would have thought they were going to be snowed in indefinitely. She waited for his coffee to pour out before grabbing one of her herbal teas. “Mm, there’s no way we’re going to be hungry. If anything, I just fed the entire store for the next week.”

The microwave finally chimed as the timer hit zero, and Seto opened the door, stared blankly at what their dinner looked like, before slamming it shut and setting the timer back another five minutes.

“Did Pegasus ever get back to you?” she asked curiously. “About the whole sheltering in place?”

“He agreed that it was safer than trying to leave in the then-current conditions,” said Seto, scowling, “ _and_ , naturally, listed off a plethora of things to keep us busy until we get dug out. As if we wouldn't already know what needs done in our own store.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” she mused.

Seto made a face at her. “This is supposed to be my weekend off.”

“It’s supposed to be mine too!” said Hermione, “I worked last weekend. And I know you tend to disagree with most of Pegasus’s decisions, but this one actually is sound. Think of how often we’re able to get our outdates done or the excess stock bottles returned to the warehouse during the busy weekdays?”

She gestured out to the floor. “I’m sure that there are things out front that need caught up on, too! We have the golden opportunity to get all of these items done – without constant interruptions!”

“We don’t get paid by the hour,” Seto countered, “ _I_ don’t get paid extra for working on my weekends off.” It was bad enough that his employees texted him when he wasn’t in the store anyways at all hours of the day and night. But at least texts he could choose to ignore if he wanted to.

“You’re already here though,” she said, “I can’t make you do them, and I don’t think Pegasus is going to get on your case if you don’t work on anything tonight or tomorrow – but if you don’t, you’ll be bored for most of the day.”

“I’ll find things to do,” said Seto, and the way he said it made her think he was setting a challenge. But to her? Or himself?

He checked over the lasagna once the microwave went off again, and this time took it out and set the tray on the table between them. “What are _you_ going to do then?”

“Returns and some small audits to take care of.” And upon seeing the look on his face once she said that, quickly backpedaled. “No worries – these don’t need ladders.”

He chuckled and cut out a piece of the lasagna. It was still cold in the center.

Back in it went.

* * *

“This isn’t working,” said Seto through narrowed eyes. They were in the process of inflating the air mattress, but with the air pump, it should only take _minutes_ to get the thing ready to go.

 _Minutes_ , was at least twenty minutes ago.

“Is the pump in all the way?” she asked. Hermione sat perched on the edge of the waiting room table, watching him work. She offered to help, but like before with going outside, he shooed her off. Though the excuse this time was that the floor was dirty and she _was_ already in her nightclothes.

Okay, fine. He can win this round.

“It is, but…” Seto shut off the pump and started running a hand over the surface of the deflated mattress, until he finally stopped. “I don’t believe this – there’s a hole in it!”

Hermione’s shoulders slumped. “You can’t be serious.”

He held it up and poked three fingers right through the gap in the seam that wasn’t in any way part of the spot used to inflate it.

“That’s a pretty big hole,” she said.

“Yeah,” he muttered, and reached for the box and turned it over in his hands to check for signs of previous use. “How much you want to be this thing was once returned and someone just threw it back onto the shelf?”

“I suppose it’s possible…” she said, and twisted around from her position to stare at the waiting room bench behind her. There was only one. “But now we’re back to square one.”

Seto leaned back, pressing his palms into the cold floor to support his weight. There was only one bench in the waiting area. But they _could_ use all of the extra blankets – and even grab the huge pet beds – and make some sort of makeshift thing on the empty shelving rows in the stockroom.

That definitely wouldn’t be the most comfortable, and would probably be incredibly noisy if one of them shifted or had to get up. It was also the farthest point from the breakroom and the bathrooms, and they’d have to travel downstairs to reach either of those rooms from there.

…On the plus side, however, the stockroom upstairs was the warmest place in the store, and the corporate-controlled thermostat liked to keep the temps on the verge of perpetually chilly.

He supposed he could try to patch the hole on the air mattress but it probably wouldn’t hold through the night.

“Oh!” Hermione said suddenly and pointed at the pharmacy gate. Upon officially closing down the store, she had locked and armed the pharmacy gate, just in case they were both outside cleaning out their cars and someone managed to walk up and into the store without them noticing. “The immunization room! There’s another bench in there!”

She got up, turned off the alarm, and opened the gate about a third of the way from the alarm box.

Seto followed her and slid open the glass door. There were two benches in the small room. One was a hair smaller than its twin in the waiting area, but the room had something that he didn’t initially think of.

Darkness.

When the store was closed and the alarm set, most of the lights inside turned off, and only a handful remained on as emergency lights. Even in the darkest hours of the night, one could still easily see where they were going walking up and down the aisles. There was no turning off of the extra lights.

He wasn’t sure about Hermione, but _he_ couldn’t sleep in anything but near-complete darkness.

The immunization room, on the other hand, didn’t use the lights on the sales floor to illuminate its small space. It’s ceiling wasn’t nearly as high, and it had its own lights, _and_ a frosted door.

The downside? Heat did not ventilate to this area of the store very well, but he had an idea to get around that.

“Problem solved. There’s room for the both of us in there.”

Hermione stood next to him in the doorway. “This…should work…” she said slowly, and brought in the pillows and blankets they found earlier. “I should be alright on the smaller end, I think. You’re the giraffe among us, you take the longer side.”

The longer side wasn’t much bigger, but he had to concede. Scrunching up like a pretzel on the smaller end would come back to haunt him in the morning.

“Or one of us can stay out in the waiting area,” said Hermione.

“It’s not going to get dark enough in the store,” said Seto, “We can’t set the alarm to shut down half the lights, and even if we override the system, it’s not going to be enough to sleep.”

“Alright then,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “Immunization room it is.”

Seto disappeared into the winter goods section and emerged with one of the portable heaters.

“Remind me to buy this tomorrow,” he said, and wrestled it from the box, setting up in the center of the room, aimed directly at the corner where the two ends of the benches meet.

“Is that going to be strong enough?” she asked.

“It oscillates,” he said, and plugged it in behind the little table at the foot of his makeshift bed.

“Oh, that’ll definitely be warm enough then,” she said, holding her hands out in front of it as it started up.

“Good.” He set his phone on the table and made for the office where his overnight bag was stashed, along with his shoes and the original clothes he had worn that day, drying from the heat kicking on and off in the tiny room. “I’m going to get changed. I’ll be back.”

In his absence, she slipped under her designated set of bedding. She’s maybe sat on one of these benches for a few seconds over the course of a week, usually when she had to go out and consult a patient waiting for a prescription. She’s never sprawled out on one before, and it was surprisingly more comfortable than she thought.

Perhaps sleeping here wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Seto returned not long after and slid the glass door shut behind him. The lights were already off in the immunization room, and the frosty double-panes of glass filtered out most of the light from the sales floor.

“I doublechecked the front doors,” he said, “Everything’s locked.”

“Oh good,” she said, and snuggled a little tighter into her blankets. “Well…I suppose I’ll see you in the morning then.”

“I guess so.”

* * *

Hermione was surprised how well she slept and stirred, roused from sleep by the smell of coffee. The sliding door was open just a fraction, and Seto was gone. She blinked and stretched, taking another look around their makeshift bedroom.

Not only was he already up and out of the room, but he had folded his blankets already and set them on the table.

Sliding her feet back into her slippers, she shuffled off to the breakroom, rubbing at her eyes.

Seto was scrolling through his phone, with a partially-eaten bagel on the paper plate in front of him.

“Mm, morning,” she said sleepily. “What time is it?”

“7:16,” he said, and nodded to the counter beside the microwave. “If you want cream cheese on your bagel, I left out the knife.”

“Oh, thanks!”

She started up her morning tea and grabbed the bagel bag. Seto clearly had been up for some time, having changed out of his sleep clothes for his usual work uniform: a dark dress shirt and black slacks, despite that neither of them would face any customers.

“So, what is your agenda for the day, since you are adamant to get work done?”

“Well, I’d like to get the returns set up for Monday when we get the next order,” said Hermione, “Afterwards I have to go through and redo some of the pharmacy filing systems we have because they’re horrendously out of date. I could also use your help looking up a few items upstairs from that audit.”

She eyed him curiously. “And you? You seemed rather adamant about not wanting to work on your weekend off.”

“I don’t want to do any of the things Pegasus _wants_ done – not because I can’t or am unwilling to do them – that’s not the issue. They’re just items that the team already does on their own, and has no real issue doing on time. I’ll probably reorganize the stockroom.”

He downed the rest of his coffee. “I’m not working past three, so whatever you need from me has to be done by then.”

She blinked at him. “Three? And how are you going to spend the rest of your day without going bonkers in here?”

Seto smirked at her.

* * *

**Grab the Popcorn**

“What are you doing?” Hermione asked, at half-past four. She had been mildly distracted with watching the snow fall on the drive-thru camera than getting half of her filing done and eventually she finished the section she was working on and just gave up. But all of her excess medication stock had been boxed and set up for return and all of the outstanding outdated stock bottles were claimed out for damages. _And_ she and Seto were able to find the scripts for the audit in relatively short order.

In all, a rather productive day.

But when she left the pharmacy, she found that Seto had connected a wire from the waiting room television to a laptop she didn’t even realize he had with him. Did that come from his overnight bag?

“Entertainment,” he said.

She craned her neck to see what was on the screen. A video streaming service.

“How do we have Internet? I thought the store didn’t have Wi-Fi.”

“It doesn’t,” Seto said, “Unless you know where to look.”

She furrowed her brow. When the DMs and their bosses came around the stores for visits, their laptops connected always to some secret internal network. Or maybe it was just the store’s Internet connection, whatever it was. She really wasn’t sure. The only thing she knew was that none of these stores had a public connection for just anyone to use.

“…Are you going to get in trouble for using a corporate network to stream movies?”

Seto shook his head and pointed a thumb generally towards the side of the building. “No, I’m stealing the house next door’s connection, because they weren’t smart enough to encrypt it.”

He clicked a few keys on the laptop, and the screen mirrored itself onto the TV, and Hermione took another look around the waiting area. The bag of popcorn she had picked up yesterday had been poured out into one of the paper bowls on the table in front of the bench. The heater had been moved out of the immunization room and into prime position to keep them warm.

She reached over and picked up one of the blankets she used the night before. “You knew I’d be cold, didn’t you?”

He merely shrugged. “You’re always cold.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong.

“So what are we watching?”

“Whatever you want,” he said, “In a bit though. I want to show you something.”

Her eyebrows raised. “Oh?”

“Wait here.”

She didn’t expect him to head into the breakroom and come out a minute later with a piping mug of tea in one hand, and naturally a coffee in his other, nor did she expect him to lead her all the way upstairs.

He handed her his coffee and dug into his pocket for his store keys, which he used to unlock the door to the roof, and Hermione could only gasp at the sight in front of her.

The sun was in the process of setting, hidden behind the thick storm clouds, and it left an eerily beautiful hue in the sky. The snow was still heavily falling, flurries of large, distinguishable flakes.

Snow accumulated all the way up to be level to the bottom of the roof door, and she was genuinely surprised that the door even opened in the first place. Surely he didn’t spend his day up here making a path for the door to swing out just so they could watch the snow fall?

Unless he moved it already, there was no shovel in sight, so she pushed the thought to the side. The door itself was also at least a foot, maybe two up off the floor so perhaps that was why it opened so easily.

He took the coffee back and sipped it. “There’s two feet there now.”

She turned to him, eyes wide. “You measured it?”

“I was curious.”

“I see…”

Hermione cupped her hands around her mug and leaned against the doorframe. Unlike the ground below and the disaster on the roads, up here the snow was perfectly undisturbed. The downtown was just visible in the distance, bright lights from the buildings surrounded by snow.

It was a sight that belonged on a postcard, not from the roof of a drugstore.

She could watch the snow fall all day.

* * *

“Pick something to watch,” he said, and handed her the laptop after dinner. “Just watch the cord coming out of the back.”

He reached for the popcorn bowl as she scrolled down through the list.

“This one,” she said, clicking on a title. It was one he’d never watched before, but the description was right up his alley. Crime, mystery, and parallel universes.

“Have you seen it before?” he asked.

“Nope. But it looked interesting.” She wrapped herself in the blanket and got comfortable as he set the computer back onto the table.

“You know…this is sort of nice.”

He glanced over at her.

“Not the whole being stuck in the store bit, but this is kind of relaxing in a way. Even if we’re not working, we’re sort of separated from the rest of the world, unaffected by whatever’s going on outside. There’s not a lot to do in here, but I’ve felt more at ease today than on my normal days off at home.”

He couldn’t help but agree with her – if anything he got a long, uninterrupted night’s sleep, which was the last thing he expected from spending the night not in his own bed at home, but at work. And he was determined to do a whole lot of nothing tomorrow, dug out or not. Even if the whole lot of nothing was crashing in the immunization room.

“I hate to break it to you,” he said, “But we’re likely to be freed sometime tomorrow.”

“I know – and that’s a good thing. Crookshanks is going to develop abandonment issues.”

“ _Who_?”

“My cat – I never told you about him? Hang on a second.” She rummaged through the folds in the blanket for her phone and scrolled through the photos. “Here.”

Seto took the phone from her and stared at the image. A large, floofy orange cat with the sassiest look on his face stared up at him as if to say ‘Hey! Put the phone down and _feed me_.’

“Big cat.”

“He’s my snuggle buddy,” she said. “My neighbor is checking in on him for me.”

“He’s a cat – I’m sure he’s doing fine,” said Seto, and he handed back her phone.

“Oh, I’m sure, but he tends to know what time I usually come home and likes to sit by the door and wait for me. And I didn’t make it back yesterday.”

“You said the neighbor is checking on him, so he’s not alone. What’s the worst that can happen, he bust open a bag of food?”

Hermione laughed. “No, Crookshanks isn’t a fan of the dry food unless it’s literally the last thing he can eat.” She resettled against the back of the bench and drew her legs up under the blanket.

* * *

Seto wasn’t sure exactly how many episodes they went through, but he felt his eyes growing tired far earlier than he expected, and glanced at his watch. It was barely past ten. He was used to not climbing into bed until past midnight on a regular basis.

Cleaning the stockroom didn’t take a ridiculous amount of effort. For doing a whole lot of not much today, he certainly felt exhausted.

He jumped, startled, as a weight crashed into his shoulder. He quickly turned his head to the right and felt his face blush. Hermione, who managed to scrunch up enough on the seat to wrap herself in the throw blanket, had fallen asleep and teetered into him.

Seto froze, instantly unsure what to do. She was tuckered out, and he wasn’t far behind her. Should he wake her so they could retire for the night in the immunization room? It didn’t seem right – she looked at peace slumped into him, her breaths slow and even, even if her position all folded up didn’t look incredibly comfortable.

He considered getting up, bringing her pillow out from the other room, and leaving the heater with her for the night there in the waiting area, so he could get himself ready for bed. But it didn’t seem right to leave her alone like that either.

And then he _also_ considered just scooping her up and carrying her to bed, but that potentially raised all sorts of inappropriate flags. Despite the unusual circumstances they found themselves in, she is first and foremost his coworker.

The episode ended and the streaming service popped up with the “Hey, you still want to keep going?” message. Seto stared blankly at the message for a few minutes before reaching with his free arm for the remote to turn off the tv.

Hermione still hadn’t budged next to him.

He leaned back and rested his head against the wall. It wasn’t all that comfortable, but it’d do. Just long enough for Hermione to wake up on her own and then they could both migrate into the immunization room. Surely she wouldn’t stay in that position all night, so until then, he’d just close his eyes for a few minutes and wait it out.

 _For now_ , it seemed like the safest option…

* * *

Hermione blinked her eyes open and sat up, disoriented. She was still in her clothes from yesterday, cocooned in her blanket from the waiting area, with the other one she had used for bed draped over it.

When did she get up from the movie?

She felt the heat from the fan heater swaying back and forth as she reached for her phone sticking out from under her pillow. 10am Sunday.

Her eyes bugged out – was she really so tired that she slept in so late?

Even stranger was that Seto was _also_ still passed out on the bench next to her, an arm draped over his eyes to block out the bits of light filtering through the sliding door. He too was still in yesterday’s clothes.

Did…did he _carry_ her to bed? The thought turned her face beet red and despite him still asleep and unable to see her, she turned away so if we woke up that moment he wouldn’t notice anything.

As quietly as she could manage, she pushed the blankets aside and slipped out of the immunization room, trying to let in as little of the store lighting as possible. She washed up and readied for the day.

Even if Seto chose to not take care of any store matters today, she still had to do the weekly bin reconciliation. Without any patients to interrupt her, it would take no more than an hour, so the sooner she could knock it out, the better.

But first – tea.

A loud scraping sound reached her ears when she left the ladies’ room and she crept up to the front of the store. The snow had long stopped, but it was piled high against the front doors. A plow was moving up and down the main street, with slow-moving traffic carefully trailing behind.

But that wasn’t the source of the scraping noise. A scooping vehicle seen only at construction sites was moving through parts of the lot, slowly pushing snow in short waves further and further to the back of the curb. Along with the truck, no less than four people were trying to dig out the sidewalk, and Hermione felt a ping of regret watching them. She and Seto _could_ have gone out yesterday and tried to take care of the sidewalks, to make it easier for the cleaning crew.

But the important thing was that they were getting cleared out, which meant hopefully the roads were passable enough now that they could leave and venture home for what remained of the weekend.

She turned and headed back to the immunization room. It seemed wrong to wake him, but after the crews left, the two of them would have to dig out their cars. Might as well start gathering their things and prepare to close down the store – for real this time.

Seto was still asleep when she returned to the room, and after hesitating, she laid a hand down on his shoulder and gently shook it. “Seto?”

“…..Hn….?”

“We’re getting rescued.”

He groaned and shifted his stiff arm off of his face. “ _Goody.”_

“I’ll start a coffee for you?”

Seto still hadn’t opened his eyes yet. “What time is it?”

“After 10am.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” he moaned, and she couldn’t tell if he was despaired about sleeping in so late…or being woken up in the first place. “Yeah…”

* * *

Isono pulled into the parking lot first thing Monday morning. The text blast that went out to all of the employees mentioned that the lot was cleaned midday yesterday, and today would be the first day everyone would be reporting to work.

He walked into the office to find a number of curious things. A letter was taped to the back office computer. A cardboard box full of blankets sat underneath Seto's desk, along with an air mattress and a space heater - both of which looked to have been taken out of their boxes and haphazardly shoved back inside.

He tore the note off the monitor.

_Isono-_

_Several items of note:_

  1. _Hermione and I are taking personal days. The district scheduler and Pegasus already know. Mako will be doing a double._
  2. _The store has been fully faced and recovered to my expectations. How you see the store is how I expect it to look daily. Walk with the cashiers and coach as needed._
  3. _Leave all the stuff under my desk alone. Receipts are taped to my monitor. Leave them there._
  4. _The stockroom has been cleaned and organized. This is how it should look every day, not just when I have free time on my hands._
  5. _Assist the pharmacy as needed. Expect to complete a lengthy Code Yellow in my absence._
  6. _I will not be answering my phone. Reach out to our sister store as needed if anything comes up. _



_As usual, please make a task assignment for the day. I would also like you to do a thorough 3x3 section walk of the entire store of items that need to be completed throughout the week._

_Check the work order dashboard, and sign off on any snow removal invoices that come through._

_I will be back tomorrow._

_-SK_

_PS: Yugi opens with you this morning. Let him know I finished all of his little projects except the Custom Cover Books. He can have fun with those._

Isono set the note down and started his day, taking a curious glance back at the random assortment of things in the office that definitely weren't there when he was here last on Thursday. 

Just what went on here?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes the original "12 Days of Fic-Mas"! I may return later to write more little stories and continue the budding little romance, but for now the story is considered complete.

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like a little extra Seto/Hermione in your day, feel free to check out my [Wayward Wizardry](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1115166) series where the ship originates!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! :D


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